- I failed to tweet Ted Peter’s excellent #SoCIA2016 talk on ethical issues in astrobio. Diff strategies for peer/inferior/advanced aliens!
- But now, Brian Green on “Convergences in the ethics of space exploration” at #SoCIA2016
- Alien as divine judgment/test: advanced aliens watching how we deal w/ inferior aliens. (But why are advanced ones doing this?) #SoCIA2016
- Not the Golden Rule but the Uranium Rule (cold war name): “do unto others as they could/would do unto you.” #SoCIA2016
- Manifest complexity. Especially the value of the sociality-reason-culture triad that produces ethics. #SoCIA2016
- Deep into ethics for the last two talks of #SoCIA2016. First, astrobiology and natural law. Requires thinking of all life as purposeful.
- Tech-driven growth mindset “pursue new things instead of competing; multiply resources via tech” = silicon valley libertarinaism #SoCIA2016
- Space exploration is instance of this? SpaceX has natural monopoly on colonizing Mars! #SoCIA2016
- Natural law ethics: living organisms have built-in personal teleology. Do it well! Doing it excellently = virtue. #SoCIA2016
- Organisms should be morally ranked by their capacity for excellence? How are we measuring that exactly? #SoCIA2016
- All moral systems need to have a system of ethics that bridges nature to teleology. This is trivial; otherwise it’s not moral. #SoCIA2016
- Try to avoid lose-lose situations when possible. Thus, we should go be excellent (extractive?) on lifeless rocks & moons! #SoCIA2016
- If you have to judge between goals (which you do), the “better” ones are the non-zero-sum ones. #SoCIA2016
- And now, the final #SoCIA2016 talk: @adamqp on “Ethical obligations between us & extraterrestial life”!
- Reminder: ETL = extraterrestrial life. ETI = intelligence. For twitter, I'll use these interchangably. This is ethics not bio. #SoCIA2016
- Begins with a discussion of aliens in underpants. Critical moral value y/n? #SoCIA2016
- Obvious that we have duties to conscious/rational/sensate/communicative ETI, and vice versa. #SoCIA2016
- BUT: only have obligations to rational/sentient beings, and ETL probably won’t be those. Thus, no obligations to it? #SoCIA2016
- Kantian ethics: humans have value b/c of rational beings. But he was wrong: see how we treat pets, even strays. #SoCIA2016
- JS Mills (Utilitarianism). Moral community of all sentient beings: it’s about experiencing pleasure/pain. Which has its own trap. #SoCIA2016
- Rationality and sentience are products of brains, a particular evolutionary heritage. Only a subset of Earthlife has ‘em. #SoCIA2016
- Given how rare sentient-brains are in Earth, they’re very contingent. Unlikely to happen independently? #SoCIA2016
- Diverse Solution Conjecture: we think our functional states (e.g. pleasure/pain) are only way to solve resource problem. #SoCIA2016
- Emojis used to excellent effect here. A+ art design. #SoCIA2016
- We have considerable ethical duties to ourselves: self-development, nurture respect for humanity, promote own happiness, etc #SoCIA2016
As seen on
benjaminckinney.com
