From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Wed Oct 30 2002 - 09:56:39 MST
gts wrote:
> Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> > I argue that the answer is that we should treat all the
> > copies/dupes/forks/etc. as if they acted as a single moral entity.
>
> That makes no sense to me, unless you are prepared to argue that each of the
> forks lacks free-will to choose for themselves the proper and legal course
> of action in a given situation.
I'm not arguing that at all. (Or, rather, I don't have to argue that.)
Instead, I'm arguing that if we abide by this principle, we should expect
malicious copy-sets to be able to get away with murder and other worse
crimes; the legal/moral rules would become practically unenforcable on
these sets.
Now, with that said, you can still stick to your guns here, and argue that
moral autonomy should imply legal individuality. But I think it's pretty
obvious that this particular moral law would rapidly lead to chaos in the
streets. At a minimum, no one could expect their debts to be repaid, as
long as the debtor might do something "crazy" and replace himself with an
unaccountable copy set. But the greatest threat would come from
suicide-murderers.
Of course, in principle, we live in *some* threat of this happening now:
aren't we always at the trivial risk that debtors might kill themselves,
that every murderer will just commit suicide, etc? Yes, but what makes
this debt managable is that such actions are rare, and that, after it
happens, there are fewer people in the world who would act this way. But
there's good reason to think that in a world of copy-sets, such actions
would happen a *lot*, and people who did it would *multiply*.
This is not because you are wrong and copy-sets really *are* all one
person, but because many copy-sets would *act* as if they were. Just look
around you; a non-trivial fraction of this group seems to think that their
copy-sets would all be one person. A significant fraction of this group
thinks that their view will become the norm if and when copy-sets become
part of our everyday affairs. Regardless of whether you agree with their
philosophical viewpoint, I think you must take seriously the fact that
many many people could come to believe it, and that, for such groups, any
one of them would, say, become a suicide bomber without hesitation, if
they didn't have any other independent moral reason not to do this.
So, in order to maintain some semblance of order in a society in which
duplication is easy, you'll *have* to prevent this activity somehow; I
think the answer has to be to enforce crimes on entire copy-sets, rather
than on individual copies. If we don't do this, we'll soon be swamped by
a majority populace upon whom our system of law is unenforcable.
I realize that this flies in the face of a well-accepted moral rule (if
you take a certain side of an ongoing philosophical debate). But the
consequences would be too disasterous to ignore in this case. It'd take
an excessively naive anti-pragmatism to cling to the rule in the face of
consequences of the kind we'd expect if nobody could enforce laws on
copy-sets.
> People can already choose to make children. Those children are
> responsible for their own actions after they reach legal age.
Children take years to develop. They are also substantially more likely
to diverge from the opinions and behaviors of their parents than copies
are to diverge from each other. They're also considerably less likely
than copy-sets to commit suicide for their "family" members.
> Similarly, a fork "born" of legal age would decide for himself whether
> or not to do your bidding. If you coerced him to act unlawfully then you
> would be guilty of extortion or worse.
It would be no coercion. Imagine an insane serial murderer who made a
copy of himself whenever he intended to kill someone; he'd kill his
victim, then kill himself.
I suppose you'd argue that there'd be nothing morally correct to do to
prevent this from happening over and over and over: the killer would have
been automatically brought to justice, you might argue, every time the
crime was committed. But the fact of the matter is that it would just
keep happening, over and over and over again. (Imagine if he made himself
a whole army!) How would you prevent this? Or would you?
> Surely each adult person should be considered a free and independent
> agent, regardless of origin (fork or womb). Our entire system of justice
> is based on this principle.
I realize that, but we'd still have to throw it out.
You might think of this like those old philosophical examples in which you
must choose between rejecting a cherished moral rule or else aliens will
blow up the planet or whatever. Here, I think the choice is just as
stark.
> > Consider the worst case scenario in a system in which copies are not
> > responsible for each others' actions:
>
> But that is the best case scenario!
>
> In a free society no person should be punished for another person's crimes!
I realize how important this principle is, but we have to throw it away if
the consequences of it are too disasterous to ignore.
> The administration of justice will be more difficult after the advent of
> forking, but both the prosecution *and* the defense will encounter
> similar problems.
Oh? Can you give an example? It seems to me that defense will be
trivial: "It wasn't me, it was a copy. Reasonable doubt. Next case."
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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