From: Darren Reynolds (extro@blue.demon.co.uk)
Date: Sat Aug 16 1997 - 15:27:45 MDT
At 16:06 15/08/97 -0700, Robin Hanson wrote:
>I suggest social shunning of people who seem to be torturing creatures
>substantially different from themselves. A positive prospect is that
>the most useful experiments will probably be best done on copies of
>yourself - that gives you the most info about improving yourself.
>So experimenting on creatures very different from yourself is already
>suspicious. Especially if those other creatures are smart enough do
>decide for themselves what experiments would help them improves
>themselves. The problem is experiments on "dumb" different creatures.
Robin,
Today, we build computers to help us think.
Tomorrow, we will create devices which more capability to "think" (whatever
*that* means) than humans have today.
Will they be our slaves, and should their creators be shunned by society?
I went through a phase of being vegan (vegetarian pure) on the grounds that
I didn't want to get eaten by aliens who used the same excuse that humans
often do for cows and sheep. But then I figured: hey, in a thousand years'
time, I'll probably be able to create cows inside my own body at will.
Surely they will be *my* cows? And if so, then what difference that the
cows are in a field rather than in my body? Surely they are still *my*
cows? Hmm ...
I still don't eat cows (well, not much), but I wondered what you thought
about it. And, since the reasoning seems the same, whether you think that
tomorrow's computers should be called slaves.
Regards,
Darren
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:44 MST