From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!cbo Tue May 12 15:50:24 EDT 1992
Article 5556 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum)
Subject: Re: AI failures
Message-ID: <92May11.133213edt.47893@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <uc2m8INNn5d@early-bird.think.com> <1992May8.155052.13848@psych.toronto.edu> <uetinINNco5@early-bird.think.com> <1992May10.003028.19333@psych.toronto.edu> <MORAVEC.92May10004528@turing.think.com>
Date: 11 May 92 17:32:43 GMT
Lines: 104

 
Hans Moravec responds to Michael Gemar:
| > True perhaps for some naive Utilitarian positions, but hardly the case for
| > Kantian ethics.
|  ...
| >  You've been reading too much sociobiology.  
| 
| I'll take E.O. Wilson over your favorite dead humanist windbag any day.
| Nobody has all the answers, but at least the scientific approach has effective
| way of checking out opinions.

Okay.  E.O.Wilson is now a distinguished moral theorist, and Kant is a
nothing but a "windbag".  I see.  Kant surely isn't easy reading, but to
call him a windbag, I suspect, is going a little too far.  As far as
"checking out opinions" goes, I wonder.  I wonder how "the scientific
approach" is going to help us check out opinions about the so-called
"wonderful things we can do".  As of yet, I haven't seen the scientific
criteria for deciding when a thing is wonderful, and for deciding how
many less-than-wonderful things can be justified in order to bring these
wonderful things about.

But then, I guess I haven't been keeping up on the literature.  Can someone
post references to (or better, precis of) recent and influential articles 
from the "Journal of Scientific Ethics", or whatever publication it is that
is the flagship of this prophetic movement? 
 
| > Well, Hans, the solution we use with *people* now is simply to *not
| > produce them*.  This is the suggested method for dealing with the
| > problems of the Third World, rather than letting people
| > overpopulate and then starve.  I see no reason why the production of
| > artificial people should not be governed by the same moral code.
| 
| I see many reasons. In a world where the computational resources are
| sufficient to create billions of minds with a single command, many
| really wonderful things can be done, if the space isn't clogged up with
| worthless entities.  Imagine solving a large problem by making many
| mental clones of oneself, each modified so it would be obsessed with
| working on its own unique part of the search space, and programmed to
| simply stop, and relinquish its storage space, when its job was done.
| 
| Your alternative is simply pointless.

And what is the point of *Han's* alternative?  To do some "wonderful things"
by first creating a bunch of slaves and then summarily disposing of them 
when he is done?  What is so wonderful that would require such behavior?
How many people today would go along with such a project?  

I agree with Michael Gemar that most people who would go along with this
kind of scenario for artifically created "persons" would only do so because
they believe that these "persons" are fundamentally different morally from
true persons (of which to date humans appear to be the only confirmed
examples).  But Hans seems to be applying this idea to human persons as
well, arguing in the reverse direction: we would gladly do this for 
artifically created entities that are no different from us in any morally
relevant aspect. Therefore, we should be willing to do this for human 
persons as well. 

Moreover, Hans appears to be saying, we should acknowledge that "person"
is at best a highly derivative concept from a moral point of view. It is 
society or "the group" ("improving the groups well being") that is the 
fundamental moral notion. Perhaps "person" is just nonsense upon stilts.

| We are the product
| of a Darwinian meander, a patchwork of improvisations, barely
| able to think at all.  If we play our cards right, we can invest
| that last bit of luck, and  parlay it into successors built with
| and evolving through foresight, a process that beats blind Darwinism.

We may not think very well, but who cares?  Since when did the ability 
to think become of overriding moral imperative?  (Overweening seems more 
like it) Why should we want to do any of this if it requires mistreating, 
or even erasing, our very one personhoods in the process?

But Hans might argue that the ability of one giant organism to think wonderful
thoughts is worth more than our own feeble attempts at living. He might
argue that we should realise this and rationally accept it, willingly giving
up our personhoods to become undistinguished parts of this being. If that's
all he is really arguing, I have no strong objections to it, provided that
his project is carried out in our already existing moral framework that 
attempts to respect personal autonomy (where it is likely doomed to failure).

| Life on earth is making an equally big change because it has
| stumbled on intelligence, and will turn itself into self-amplifying
| Mind (utterly transforming earth, the solar system, and beyond, in
| the process).
 
I guess Kant was a windbag, but Hegel had a pretty good handle on things.
Here we have a simple little slide from "lifes" to Life" and "minds" to
Mind. It's kinda cool, but I'm not buying it. Sure, the same thing happened
in evolution, and now single cells don't have much of a say in what
happens in the complete organisms they make up. The difference is, no one 
ever asked those single cells, or their ancestors, if they would go along 
with the deal. Those cells didn't know any better, or they were coerced
(to speak loosely).  Some of us know better now, and Hans is probably going
to have trouble convincing all of us.  Of course, there is always armed
revolt...

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Calvin Ostrum                                            cbo@cs.toronto.edu  
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An endless awakening sounds like not all that much fun, come to think 
of it: I for one, an simply unable to self-reconstruct before I've had
my morning coffee.   -- Jerry Fodor
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