From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!mucs!mccuts!fs1.mcc.ac.uk!zlsiida Tue May 12 15:49:11 EDT 1992
Article 5426 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: re re ai failures
Message-ID: <zlsiida.144@fs1.mcc.ac.uk>
Date: 5 May 92 12:26:34 GMT
References: <zlsiida.112@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> <1992May1.193141.24350@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre
Lines: 66

In article <1992May1.193141.24350@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:

>In article <zlsiida.112@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd) writes:
>>I've never had a pet that 'I just got tired of'
>>I think a lot of nonsense gets talked about when it is or isn't OK to kill
>>things, though I don't kill anything myself except for food or clothing or
>>in self protection.  

>Really???!!!! Do you breathe (in things)? Do you walk (on things)?
               --------------------------  -----------------------
               No intentionality           Not if I see them
  
>Do you occasionally get insects in your eye?
                         -------------------
The insect dies because it hits me, not because I hit it.

 Do you sometimes slap them
                  ----------
>dead just because they're annoying -- say, mosquitos? 
 ----
Only if they actually attack

Do you buy silly
>little trinkets from foreign countries where working conditions contribute
>to the early death of the workers? 
              -------------------
No


Do you ever buy flowers? Did you know
>that in the greenhouses in which carnations are grown the workers are sprayed
                                                           ------------------
>with pesticides daily? 

I personally have never forced anybody to work in a pesticide-loaded 
environment, and I would be more than happy to pay extra or accept the 
occasional bug in my flowers.

> Do you buy tuna, the catching of which leads to the
>death of hundreds of thousands of dolphins and whales annually? Do you ever
 --------------------------------------------------------------
How many?  I buy the stuff labelled 'dolphin-friendly'.  

>fly in planes, which kill millions of birds annually?
                      ----------------------
I suppose it could be millions, lots of planes about.  Only flown twice, and
one of those was a 4 seater where I'd have noticed a bird strike.


>Do you feel silly about being so self-righteous yet?
No because I don't think it was self-righteousness
And in any case, as I said, a lot of nonsense gets talked about when it is
or isn't OK to kill.  Regardless of moral or ethical codes or laws I think
you'll find history shows that killing happens whenever it's expedient.
The only reason we have a problem with the 3year old is that it's the same
species as us, and there are very sensible reasons why we don't usually kill
our own species (the selfish gene et al.).  The AI failure isn't the same
species as us, which is enough to ease most people's conscience.  But there
have been many times in history when people had very little trouble with
their consciences while they murdered 3 year olds - Vietnam, Kuwait, etc.
Killing is only a problem as long as we all agree that it is.
 

+--Great Quotes of our Time---------------------------------------------+
| It is not the policy of this department to backstitch corrective code |
+----------------------------------------R J Collins, compilers, UMRCC--+


