From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Nov 22 2002 - 14:52:08 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> ...
>
> Okay. Here's the difference from my perspective: I disapprove of
> cauliflower, while murder is morally wrong. Given that in both cases
> it is undesirable that X happen to me, what distinguishes the two?
> The reason cauliflower is undesirable is that I don't happen to like
> the taste of cauliflower; if I model a future in which my tastes have
> changed so that I now like cauliflower, I model it as being desirable,
> in that future, that I eat cauliflower. On the other hand, I model
> murder as morally wrong completely irrespective of how I feel about
> it. If a future Eliezer was somehow warped to like murder, it might
> be a physical fact that warped-Eliezer would commit murder, but to me,
> here and now, that doesn't matter; murder, in that visualized future,
> remains wrong. On the other hand, if my future self develops a taste
> for cauliflower, I have no problem sympathizing with that future self
> because I model the undesirability of cauliflower as being strictly
> contingent on my cognitive representation of a dislike for
> cauliflower. Murder has no such dependency. Of course the
> dependency-free model is itself a cognitive representation, but that
> shouldn't be confused with actively modeling a dependency.
> ...
Larry Niven has a relevant section in some of his "Known Space" books.
It appears that pickpocketing became a social habit, and no longer
considered immoral. For technical reasons (it became too difficult to
stop). And in his stories, citizens of Earth believed that it was a
slightly adventurous hobby, and nothing to be ashamed of. He also has
Gil the Arm comment that "We had to suppress a technological invention
that would have forced us to make murder legal." No details were given,
but he's the honorable character, so we must believe his assertion.
Is pickpocketing immoral? Would it be immoral in the world in which Gil
lived? And if the invention had been released, would murder have become
moral? Just how situational *are* ethics?
Related: Is is moral to copy music off of CD's? Does it matter whether
or not it's illegal? Does it matter whether or not it falls within fair
use?
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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