From: Philip Goetz (philgoetz@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 15 2006 - 07:06:56 MDT
On 8/15/06, Patrick Crenshaw <patrick.crenshaw@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've done some thinking about this.
>
> The first conclusion I came to is that the morality of an action has
> to do with the amount that it changes the integral of some Value
> function over all space at t=infinity. If you give me any moral
> system, I can give you a Value function like this that would describe
> it.
This is one of the problems - these functions typically have no
integral over infinity, or at least we can extrapolate that, because
the total value over time can oscillate wildly, and if you count
greatest good to the greatest number, then the moral value of an
action depends more on its impact hundreds of years in the future than
its impact at present.
Almost any "bad" deed of the past now has obvious good consequences,
and vice-versa.
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