From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Fri Feb 27 2004 - 10:35:50 MST
Marc wrote:
> I don't regard the evolutionary arguments as very
> convincing. They're based on observation, not
> experiment. Besides, it's only very recently in
> evolutionary history that the first sentients (humans)
> appeared. It's the class of sentients that is
> revelent to FAI work. Evolutionary observations about
> non-sentients is not likely to say much of relevence.
### You might wish to read some evolutionary psychology texts.
-----------------------------
>
> In any event, I don't regard non observer based
> sentients as even desireable (See my other replies).
> If you strip out all observer centered goals, you're
> left with normative altruism. All sentients would
> converge on this, and all individual uniqueness would
> be stripped away. You'd be left with bland
> uniformity. An empty husk. Universal morality is
> probably just a very general set of contrainsts, and
> FAI's following this alone would be qute unable to
> distinguish between the myraid of interesting personal
> goals that are consistent with it. Everything that
> didn't hurt others (assuming that Universal Morality
> is volition based) whould be equally 'Good' to such an
> FAI. There would be no possibility of anything
> unquinely human or personal. For instance the two
> outcomes 'Rafal kills himself', 'Rafal doesn't kill
> humself' would be designated as morally equivalent
> under Volitional Morality.
### I don't understand the first part of your paragraph. As to your claim
about what would and would not be equivalent under volitional morality, I
have to disagree. Since I am opposed to killing myself, all other being
equal, one of the outcomes is regarded as inferior in any moral system
striving to fulfill the wishes of sentients, including mine.
Rafal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:46 MDT