From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Nov 23 2002 - 13:23:57 MST
On Sat, Nov 23, 2002 at 02:24:17PM -0500, Alexander Sheppard wrote:
> >Hmm, are smart people behaving more ethically? I don't think so, >looking
> >at the academic and corporate environment I can't see any real >evidence.
> >However, stupid people often resort to coercion. So again, I >think IQ
> >prevents something bad but does not by itself bring good.
>
> Actually, it seems to me that people who devote themselves more to gaining
> knolwedge do behave more ethically, actually--because ethics is part of
> truth. It's rare that you get a jingoist scientist who actually discovers
> very much, because that isn't conductive to truth, and if you're really
> committed to finding the truth, then you won't be a jingoist.
While I would like this to be true, I don't think the evidence is in.
Many of the great researchers had serious disparities in how
openminded they were in different fields. What really should be done
is an analysis of scientist biographies to see how true this is - for
every pleasant Spinoza there is a Teichmüller
(http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Teichmuller.html)
> Similiarly, you'll find that most of these people who are hailed as
> great inventors and corporate leaders actually didn't really invent
> all that much compared to many other people who aren't recognized at
> all, because corporate leadership is basically a job of empire
> building, and that's not conductive to truth either, any more than
> the literal empire building of say, Hitler or any number of US
> Presidents was.
Hmm, what about Edison? A brilliant inventor who even *invented* the
modern research lab to aid his empire building. Granted, quoting
examples at each other will not lead to any deeper understanding,
because we can always find people who fit our rpeconceptions.
I seriously doubt that the pursuit of truth leads to ethics. Rather,
people who pursue truth rather than power invest more time in
activities that are seldom called unethical (with the exception of the
handling of test animals, of course).
> I think you'll find, actually, that in the past, productive
> scientists have generally tilted toward the left, and dissident end
> of the political spectrum.
I wouldn't call the left the dissident side of the spectrum through
most of the 20th century. In fact, being non-left has been
academically troublesome in many places and fields. I suggest that you
read Hayek's brilliant essay _The Intellectuals and Socialism_ (1945)
for his theory of why the academic mainstream was so red. I warmly
recommend this short essay to everybody - to the left and right - as a
forerunner of memetics and a roadmap for how to make transhumanism
respectable.
> I mean, I don't think that should
> be a reason why anyone should endorse "the left"--whatever that means--but
> generally, I think this is true, because in the past, I think what we call
> "the left" has symbolized things which were more ethical than the
> mainstream.
Hmm, what about the intellectuals of the Enlightenment? They were
certainly "left" in the sense that they were not conservatives, but by
current standards they would be liberals/libertarians. Also, if you
look at the lives of Jefferson, Franklin, Voltaire, Diderot, Francis
Bacon, Locke and Hume, most of them seem to have been just as bad as
the rest of us (as Bertrand Russel pointed out, probably only Spinoza
among the philosophers actually behaved exactly according to his own
high ethical ideals).
A good intellectual is radical - he or she questions the present,
making the future possible. But that doesn't make them ethical, and
those who get involved in actually reshaping society tend to get their
hands dirtied and sometimes bloodied.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:20 MST