If you are a meat eater you have to say it wouldn’t be immoral on behalf of the robot though. In a way morality has nothing to do with it. We want something and will attack anything that stands in the way.

But I still hope that in being better than us it will be a vegetarian and let us slowly die off in peace or keep us as pets.

I literally have no clue.

I think there is a big discrepancy between promoting something (offering people to work under bad conditions) and forcing people to buy something (slavery) which seems to be what you are targeting.

Furthermore, once somebody has the standard of living of the middle class, no thing is essential anymore. No material thing can ever give human lasting happiness as it is our mind that becomes happy not the material thing. While there is definitely a need for some basics to function, no consumption can really make a meaningful improvement to net “happiness” or “well offness” of beings at our standard of living. While a thing might make this activity a bit more comfortable or that thing a bit faster the presence or absence of these won’t make a difference to a depressed or happy person. I’m not sure if this is coherent but I have to run now. To be continued…

I think you and I are extremely likely to agree that what this very explicit approach does is allows people to talk about a model that they can have a high degree of certainty about as a limited proxy for the underlying massively complex and potentially unknowable systems humans actually use. As a reference point for discussing the reality, if you will.

Further to this, part of my desire is to look at simple principles for automatic approaches to optimization problems as well as relaying some of the solutions and work from AI into the human domain again mainly so it can help move discussions forward.

I agree that ethics needs to be for everyone though and, as such, I was hoping that over time these wide-ranging discussions of detail could be summarized into simpler principles like “Don’t just look for the future you want, look for that future’s futures”. Maybe eventually into examples and anecdotes that are simpler still.

Your comment on a previous post implied that you think that this kind of summary is loss-full, which I agree with. I’m nonetheless happy to write in this area and encourage discussion of where people can go beyond for more total solutions. As such, your recommendations and comments are very welcome

I suppose the basic question is–how do I make decisions? That’s the fundamental question of Ethics, right? This question is actually answered in Scientology:

http://www.scientology.org/videos.html#/videos/beliefs-and-practices/the-eight-dynamics

That’s not a full description of the answer–I can’t find a good summary of that online. But that discusses the factors that one has available when one makes decisions.

The fact of the matter is, that if one is going to come up with a solution for Ethics, it has to be something that the average person can apply, because that’s who’s affected by Ethics–everybody.

-Max

However I find it difficult to accept that there is any coherence in the idea that the death of all of humanity is morally good. Moral philosophy generally tends to relate the moral good to some perceived benefit to humans (or to a particular subgroup of humans). The death of all humans therefore seems necessarily incompatible with whatever is morally good. I’d at least need some good refutation of this argument before considering following the machine’s advice.

Whether I would follow such advice if given by God is a somewhat harder question, especially since you haven’t specified what kind of God you’re talking about. A demonstration of the existence of some particular God might change what we believe about morality and the nature of death to such an extent that it is difficult to predict how we would react to this question.

Our ultimate goal as a species has never been perfection, as defined by some philosophical, intellectual, or moral transcendence. These aren’t what we’re all about, and they certainly do not describe the evolution that has defined our makeup. If these were our goal, we’d be in the business of routinely killing the stupid, insane, feeble, etc. Yes, we’ve passed the stage of merely surviving, but if anything our goal should then be providing good lives to as many humans as we can, where good is some combination of happy, self-actualized, creative, secure, healthy, etc. It’s not selfish for a species to focus on itself – that’s what every species does to survive, and it creates the best result. Who exactly would we be serving by killing ourselves for the good of some undefined transcendence for a species that isn’t us?

Now, if Mr. Robot meant “there should be a gradual transition of biological humans to electronic beings, made in the form of curing the human population or becoming biomechanical, the resulting process creating happier and better people who live more fulfilled lives,” then maybe we have a deal and can selectively not have children or alter ourselves towards a better future that we’re a part of.

Also, the concept of pareto or non-pareto trades isn’t broad enough, I think, because it’s impossible to describe a skill as being in surplus or not, for any individual. I have a skill that I exchange for things (that’s how I make a living) and I have essentially an infinite amount of it–or none of it–as I wish.

So the really good point here is that exchanging things that improve society IS always going to have the best sort of return, because the group will always be able to out-produce the individual (provided that the group is sane and well-coordinated) and can take anything given to it and multiply it several times, theoretically.

But in addition to the mechanical economic aspect, there’s also always the human aspect, which is easy to forget when looking at the broad view, but even in the broad view, when you break it down, it’s actually the *only* aspect.

-Max