But even though we’re zooming in on the moral microscope and fine details are appearing and everything looks more complicated, transhumanism is still relatively simpler because it still strips out ages, technology invention dates, and other unexplained inversions of utility.

Ah, okay. But isn’t the first superintelligent AI supposed to implement our collective extrapolated moral philosophy?

Not every post I write is about the same topic. Discussion of CEV would be appropriate for Michael Anissimov’s post on same.

1. I see ethics as a mix of logic and intuition. Tension often exists between the two, as your post clearly expresses. (You seem to prefer more logic than those you see opposing transhumanism.) Another good example of the tension between the two can be found in this debate between Richard Posner and Peter Singer.
http://www.slate.com/id/110101/entry/110129/

2. Trying to base ethics exclusively on logic is like asking, Which are the correct ethical views? Others disagree, but I suspect no correct views exist, i.e. I doubt the “is-ought problem” can be solved. Without adding intuition, we get nihilism. So how much intuition do we add?

3. Perhaps even more so than you, I’m extremely minimalist with my use of intuition. All I say is “if it feels good then it is good”. (This is “hedonism”. Note that “feeling good” here is not just crude pleasure but the richer, more sophisticated enjoyment we’re capable of, and of course also even richer enjoyments we’re not capable of.) So I wouldn’t even say “learning is good” unless it helps us enjoy (which of course it does).

4. So, I agree with Peter Singer that species membership should have no moral significance, and I agree with you that existing human physiology should not either, as long as it’s clear in both cases that this “should” that I use is based on my minimalist hedonist intuition. However, I do pay considerable respect to those who disagree with me, especially when they haven’t spent much time reflecting on these matters.

5. Is failing to save someone’s life morally equivalent to killing someone? In both cases, the result is one fewer person alive. The (possibly crucial) difference between the two is in the complex societal consequences. But what if the societal consequences weren’t there? This is a good instance of a situation where logic and intuition conflict. Siding with logic is to say yes, morally equivalent. However, doing so has gotten people like Peter Singer in a lot of controversy. I avoid these matters because they distract attention from more important things.

6. Is neglecting to procreate a new baby morally equivalent to killing someone? Again (assuming the societal consequences are equivalent even though they’re not), siding with logic is to say yes, morally equivalent. This gets to the heart of the ethics of immortality: Should we try to cure aging or should we just achieve immortality through our descendants? Logic would say it doesn’t matter (again ignoring certain details like the cost of raising children). You may enjoy this
http://felicifia.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=98

7. If our goal is for there to be the most of some good, whether it’s utility/happiness/wellbeing/etc or even learning, what should we do? Logic has lead me to conclude that the most important thing is existential risk reduction, given the very long (possibly infinite) period of time we have ahead of us to enjoy. See
http://felicifia.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=84
http://felicifia.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=103

8. So while I don’t strictly oppose the transhumanist goals of immortality and intelligence amplification, I don’t strictly support them either. I ask, Do these goals effective ways of reducing existential risk? Carl Shulman presented an interesting argument connecting immortality to existential risk reduction here
http://felicifia.com/showComment.do?commentId=262
As for intelligence amplification, as long as this intelligence would be used one way or another for risk reduction, then I’m all for it.

Your thoughts?

Presumably all of it, and then we cancel out the parts that contradict each other. That’s how CEV works, I think.

“All I say is “if it feels good then it is good”.”

This principle seems to get us a perfect morality in universes with zero or only one optimization process. However, in universes with multiple optimization processes (such as ours), you run into the problem of when one processes’ “good” contradicts another processes’ “good”.

“Is failing to save someone’s life morally equivalent to killing someone? In both cases, the result is one fewer person alive.”

You are correct that the *results* are the same (barring grieving relatives and the like). However, the *prior conditions* aren’t the same, and unless you can calculate a mathematical model which both fits our moral judgment in these kinds of problems and cancels out any prior condition terms, I wouldn’t be so quick to discard prior conditions as having any effect on the morality calculation. For instance, a universe that’s empty because we blew it up strikes me as much worse morally than a universe that’s empty because G was 27% too large.

“Should we try to cure aging or should we just achieve immortality through our descendants?”

“Immortality through descendants” is vacuous; the only thing passed on is your genes, and by the thousandth generation they’re so dilute you probably couldn’t even recognize them. It’s like claiming that the Roman Empire was immortal because the atoms in Caesar’s last breath are still with us today.

“I ask, Do these goals effective ways of reducing existential risk?”

Intelligence amplification is absolutely essential to reducing existential risk. Immortality is just huge benefit #61,102 to intelligence amplification.

Seth, I think that if anything you are expressing a far stronger drive toward logical simplicity than I do. I don’t see anything paradoxical, or even morally erroneous, about a hero sacrificing their life so that ten others may live. Since the hero does not get to see the results of their action, and since it is not neurologically realistic to suppose the hero can momentarily experience more hedonic reward than they could expect over their remaining lifespan, I must believe that people can have interests beyond themselves. Indeed, I don’t see anything the slightest bit odd about this - if you are concerned for your own happiness, that is only one special case of our human ability to steer the future in all sorts of directions.

“If it feels good than it is good” is problematic for several reasons, some of which I’m sure you’ve heard before. Human reasoning suffers from many known flaws (cognitive biases) which distort our present subjective expectation of future experiences. By “feels good -> is good” do you mean that the decision which feels best is the right one, or that we should defy our intuitions in order to best cold-bloodedly maximize our future integral of hedonic experience over time? These are incompatible imperatives. If you hold that we should cold-bloodedly maximize our hedonic integral over time, ignoring if necessary any feelings we have about what are good or bad decisions, then how do you justify refusing to inject yourself full of crack - it feels like the wrong decision, but wouldn’t it maximize your integral?

In any case, I simply don’t see why I should be prohibited from having interests outside myself. It sounds like arbitrarily scooping out a large portion of my utility function over possible futures. If anything similar happened on a planetary scale - intelligence arbitrarily losing an important part of its utility function - it would be a realized existential risk because it would destroy a significant fraction of the overwhelmingly huge expected value of posterity. As a builder of AIs, this is not a minor detail unto me.

Robin, I do indeed suspect that modern ethics, as practiced in academia, are biased to be fun to argue - that the end user is no longer the individual faced with a real-life moral dilemma, but rather the academic trying to impress an audience of other academics. In particular, I think that academic ethics are biased to be minimally counterintuitive, sounding just strange enough to be interesting and worthy of argument, but not so strange as to be politically incorrect relative to other philosophers. I’m not sure I have the time myself to verify this by detailed historical studies - this is just a blog post, after all - but I suspect you can think of more examples than I can!

Panu, I would indeed - if I had to make a single choice on the basis of present information - say that it is better to gradually raise the one’s IQ to 230, than to not do so. Yes, we have less information about whether IQ 230 is a fun place to be, than we do about IQ 140 - but if I had to make a guess, I’d guess yes.

“Presumably all of it (intuition), and then we cancel out the parts that contradict each other.”

I would be *very* concerned that this would not leave us with anything given the diversity of intuitions.

“multiple optimization processes”

You’re describing rational egoism, not utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is agent-neutral: it recommends doing whatever is best for the total good, not the agent’s own good. Since all have the same goal, there are no conflicts. In the real world where not everyone is a utilitarian, an individual utilitarian still does not have conflicts- she just has a different strategy.

“For instance, a universe that’s empty because we blew it up strikes me as much worse morally than a universe that’s empty because G was 27% too large.”

Assuming that the first universe’s inhabitants enjoyed themselves before blowing their universe up, I’d say the first universe is better. It didn’t last forever, but at least it got something out of the deal.

“the only thing passed on is your genes”

The crucial things passed on are the ability to enjoy life and the ability to help others do so. Genetic similarity is not directly relevant here.

……

Eliezer:

“I don’t see anything paradoxical, or even morally erroneous, about a hero sacrificing their life so that ten others may live.”

You also appear to be confusing rational egoism with utilitarianism.

Re cognitive bias: Given uncertainty, utilitarianism typically recommends maximizing expected utility using subjective estimation. Understanding cognitive bias certainly is important here. In that spirit, I am also glad that the bias community is closely connected to both the SIAI community and the utilitarianism community. (Hi Robin!)

“As a builder of AIs, this is not a minor detail unto me.”

This is off-topic, but the AI problem gives me more pause with my own ethical thinking than anything else, since it may work so well.

“modern ethics, as practiced in academia, are biased to be fun to argue”

The repugnant conclusion may be a good case. Much discussion over what was thought to be strictly a theoretical dilemma. (I may have found a real-world instance in human-insect interaction.)

Blogs may also be biased towards fun to argue, and political discourse, and many other things. If we all agree, what’s left to discuss?

Although I understand you are trying to keep the thread on the original topic, I do ask why you are so against the thread veering off into discussing other things. This is not a social convention I am familiar with.

“I would be *very* concerned that this would not leave us with anything given the diversity of intuitions.”

Comparing one human to another human, we all have pretty much the same brain architecture, and so we tend to make similar moral judgments across a wide variety of situations. For more information on this, I recommend any good introduction to evolutionary psychology. Within a single human brain, I don’t know enough about evolutionary psychology to guess how many contradictory instincts there are, but I suspect it cannot be that many as ethical dilemmas are considered an atypical situation.

“Utilitarianism is agent-neutral: it recommends doing whatever is best for the total good, not the agent’s own good.”

How would you define total good except as some kind of mathematical operation over individual goods? Note that in the universes with zero or one optimization process, the total good and the individual good are identical, making it simple.

“The crucial things passed on are the ability to enjoy life and the ability to help others do so.”

That’s not what we mean by immortality. If you just want people to be able to enjoy life, you could go to war to help preserve quality of life and get shot at age 20, but I hope you would agree that this is not becoming immortal.

Direct sum of individual goods. This does involve asking agents to sacrifice their own wellbeing for the total good, but some sacrifice is inevitable whenever two or more agents’ interests conflict.

This is the basics of utilitarianism mathematics, aka felicific calculus
http://felicifia.blogspot.com/2006/09/utility-curves.html
I wrote it almost a year ago for a pretty intro audience so it may seem overly simplistic but it should help. It should be well enough written but I haven’t reviewed it recently.

“we tend to make similar moral judgments across a wide variety of situations”

We tend to, but we don’t always. Where do we draw the line between outlier and normal? Also, intuitions regarding violence and war concern me, as do intuitions concerning “proximalism”. (There may be a better word than “proximalism”, but I mean to refer to our tendency to value those who are in some sense close to us more than those who are in that sense far from us, whether it’s by race, nationality, region, time, family, or something else.) …My biggest exposure to psych literature is in the future valuation studies (eg Loewenstein) where our intuition seems pretty all over the map.

For point #2: Even if our intuition is wildly off-base in most situations (there is a great deal of literature documenting where it is off-base and why), that still doesn’t mean our instincts routinely contradict each other.

Suppose I say: “Yes, I want to be happy, but I also want to know what’s true. I express my preference to know an unpleasant truth over believing a pleasant lie - this preference holds in abstract even if I never find out.”

Why is this not a worthy component of my utility function, or a utility function being optimized on my behalf?

1. When you said “However, in universes with multiple optimization processes (such as ours), you run into the problem of when one processes’ “good” contradicts another processes’ “good”.”, I thought you meant to point out that if all agents try to maximize their own utility then conflicts occur (unless there are only zero or one agents). Did I misinterpret you?

2. I agree, our instincts often line up. But how do you determine how often is often enough?

…..

Eliezer:

*Thank you* for that paper. It’s an excellent one, and very timely. Do send more you think would be good to look at.

I’m reminded of Toby Ord’s thesis,
http://www.amirrorclear.net/academic/papers/decision-procedures.pdf
I agree with Toby’s basic premise, “I should follow the decision procedure that will lead to the best outcome.” As both papers point out, maximizing any sort of utility function in practice is (for humans at least) both an art and a science.

“Yes, I want to be happy, but I also want to know what’s true.”
Interestingly, Michael Anissimov and I had a very similar exchange:
http://felicifia.com/showComment.do?commentId=261
I’ll ask the same question of you: Do you value knowledge in someone’s mind or just knowledge? For example, does a book count as knowledge if no one’s read it? It sounds like you (as with Michael) mean knowledge in someone’s mind, but I’ll let you speak for yourself.

Regarding justice, I’m reminded of the Greene and Baron study on the diminishing marginal utility in utility
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/Greene-Baron-JBDM-01.pdf
See also Felicifia: “Intuitions and utilitarianism”
http://felicifia.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=28

What both the paper you linked to and your own words seem to be getting at is the point that our words “happiness” and “pleasure” don’t encapsulate all of that which seems good to us. I’ll restate here from 3 in my first comment above:

Note that “feeling good” here is not just crude pleasure but the richer, more sophisticated enjoyment we’re capable of, and of course also even richer enjoyments we’re not capable of.

I perhaps should back away from the word “hedonism”. I interpret it very broadly, I believe to include all that you describe, but perhaps the word’s connotations are a problem.

Here’s another question for you: Is ignorance bliss? For example, suppose I prefer that you don’t eat meat. Suppose you eat meat, but I never find out, not even in the slightest hint. Thus, my brain is never affected by the act of your eating meat. In your view, does this act still count against my utility function?

(In my view, it does not: ignorance is bliss. However, I find thinking that ignorance is bliss to be somewhat disconcerting- eg I strongly doubt I would plug myself back into the Matrix- so, following a better decision procedure, I often drop the matter.)

All knowledge is in someone’s mind. As the Bayesian master E. T. Jaynes once said of probability, ignorance exists in the mind: if I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon. To think that probabilities were properties of the things themselves, rather than states of uncertainty in some particular mind, was designated by Jaynes the Mind Projection Fallacy. It generalizes.

Knowledge is a state of mind and needs some particular mind to be a state of.

Is ignorance bliss? For example, suppose I prefer that you don’t eat meat. Suppose you eat meat, but I never find out, not even in the slightest hint. Thus, my brain is never affected by the act of your eating meat. In your view, does this act still count against my utility function?

(Can I really talk about your utility function? But I shall rephrase as though it were of myself.)

I prefer that people don’t die. Suppose someone dies, but I never find out. Does it count against my utility function? Of course. Absolutely. I will work as hard to drain probability out of futures in which someone dies and I never find out, as futures where someone dies and I find out. If I find out, I may become a little unhappy, which would count as a small additional negative utility, but nowhere near the negative utility of the death itself. Death is a far greater problem than the sadness of death.

The reason I’m not using your example of your dislike of my eating meat - presumably apart from your desire to preserve the life of animals per se - is that I don’t think it’s a legitimate interpersonal desire, that is, you might not want Fred to eat meat, but if I have to intervene in your dispute I will come in on Fred’s side (which is how I judge interpersonality in morality). Thus, it’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t want to see built into an FAI.

The negative utility of the sadness of death is a special case of utility functions being able to reference events in general. I care as much about other people being sad about death, as I do myself being sad about death - the sadness of death has negative utility whether or not I know about it. Also note that as part of the (deontological) drive toward truth, I would not attempt to stop someone being sad about a death by preventing them from learning about it; the only acceptable way of working to end that sadness is working to end death. (Which is a larger problem in any case!)

I think it is wise to be rigorous in distinguishing the utility of external events, from the separate and additional utilities of our emotional reactions to those events. Otherwise your utility calculations start to become very confused, and you begin to bake recipe cakes (made from only the most delicious printed recipes).

Conflicts will occur from the point of view of any given agent. To be specific, each agent will desire the modification of the other’s goal system.

“2. I agree, our instincts often line up. But how do you determine how often is often enough?”

As long as *something Friendly* emerges out of the extrapolation, it’s good enough.

“I prefer that people don’t die. Suppose someone dies, but I never find out. Does it count against my utility function? Of course. Absolutely. I will work as hard to drain probability out of futures in which someone dies and I never find out, as futures where someone dies and I find out. If I find out, I may become a little unhappy, which would count as a small additional negative utility, but nowhere near the negative utility of the death itself. Death is a far greater problem than the sadness of death.”

To paraphrase, Eliezer’s utility function considers events far more important than the knowledge of events, since the latter exists only in Eliezer’s mind anyway. An analogy would be desiring ownership of the land much more than desiring a map of the land.

First, I agree with your assessment of the nature of knowledge, i.e. that it is a state of mind.

“Can I really talk about your utility function?”
If we cannot discuss others’ utility functions, then how can we recommend anything beyond Pareto optimality? Or do you recommend nothing beyond this?

I continue to find perplexing your views regarding death. Perhaps answers to these will clarify:
1. Whose death concerns you? Humans? Sentient beings? Living things? Non-living things, such as stars?
2. A clarification, please: If someone is going to die anyways, would you prefer knowing about it or not knowing about it?
3. So if someone dies, and no one is ever sad as a result, you would still attribute negative utility to the event? If so, what property of death makes this so?
4. What are your views on birth? Does this event also constitute any sort of special case for you?
5. Do you have any other special cases?

“presumably apart from your desire to preserve the life of animals per se”
Let’s replace eating animals with wearing blue shirts, which is more ethically neutral.

“I don’t think it’s a legitimate interpersonal desire, that is, you might not want Fred to [wear blue shirts], but if I have to intervene in your dispute I will come in on Fred’s side”

We’re touching on a thorny side of preferentialism (the view that what matters is the satisfaction of individuals’ preferences). For example, with whom would you side if I prefer Fred to not have any preferences about other people?

More on this can be found in
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedonistic-Utilitarianism-Torbjorn-Tannsjo/dp/0748610421
See in particular “Elimination” in Ch.6, Against Preferentialism. I agree with Tannsjo on this matter that preferentialism is a difficult if even functional view to uphold.

“it’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t want to see built into an FAI.”
But if it happened as a result of CEV?

“as part of the (deontological) drive toward truth, I would not attempt to stop someone being sad about a death by preventing them from learning about it; the only acceptable way of working to end that sadness is working to end death.”

So you give knowledge acquisition lexical (complete) priority over emotional response? If not, how do you draw the line between the two?

Also, what property of knowledge causes you to value it?

“distinguishing the utility of external events, from the separate and additional utilities of our emotional reactions to those events”

I attach zero utility to anything other than our emotional reactions (broadly interpreted). Indeed, I define utility as an emotional phenomenon. Thus, no confusion here. If you do attach utility to non-emotional phenomena, why? What property of these phenomena makes them worth anything?

…..

Tom:

“As long as *something Friendly* emerges out of the extrapolation, it’s good enough.”

Define “something Friendly”.

“To paraphrase, Eliezer’s utility function considers events far more important than the knowledge of events, since the latter exists only in Eliezer’s mind anyway. An analogy would be desiring ownership of the land much more than desiring a map of the land.”

But isn’t desire a phenomenon that exists only in our minds?

And for you, as well: If you do attach utility to non-emotional phenomena, why? What property of these phenomena makes them worth anything?

I just meant that I’m uncomfortable speaking for your utility function when you’re, like, right here.

Whose death concerns you? Humans? Sentient beings? Living things? Non-living things, such as stars?

Certainly not stars, unless you count Sol to which I have a certain sentimental attachment. I don’t know whose death should concern me - I’d say, things bearing subjective experiences, but I suspect that only names my confusion, and I’m not even sure it should be the main criterion of value! This is one of those cases where my moral theory contains unresolved questions, and hence, I try to assign probabilistic utilities. I don’t think cows are people but I’m not totally sure. Chimpanzees seem like they could very plausibly be people.

If someone is going to die anyways, would you prefer knowing about it or not knowing about it?

I would prefer to know, even though I will be sad about it. That which can be destroyed by the truth should be, including ignorance; the rational emotion is the emotion that fits the facts. See the Twelve Virtues of Rationality if you haven’t already.

So if someone dies, and no one is ever sad as a result, you would still attribute negative utility to the event? If so, what property of death makes this so?

What property of me makes me attribute negative utility to timelines that have the property of containing deaths? My evolved psychology and moral psychology cause me to see people as friends, to mourn their loss, to empathize with the dying human’s fear of dying and will to live, and to empathize with other survivors’ sadness.

Preferences are states of mind, and need minds to be states of - my utility assignment to an event is not a property of that event, it is a property of me.

What are your views on birth? Does this event also constitute any sort of special case for you?

When people are born they can have fun life experiences and thereby bring new positive utilities into the world. But the death of an existing person is very different from having never lived, and much worse; for only living people can fear dying and prefer not to die.

With whom would you side if I prefer Fred to not have any preferences about other people?

Fred. And not just because I, myself, have preferences about other people. But I might side with you if you tried to prevent Fred from imposing by coercion his preferences on other people.

Not every moral that I have is worth enforcing by violence - those that are, like my morality that people not commit murder, have a status distinct from my preference that other people be rational.

So you give knowledge acquisition lexical (complete) priority over emotional response?

I see knowledge acquisition as determining the rational emotional response, and personally, I want people to be rational.

I attach zero utility to anything other than our emotional reactions (broadly interpreted). Indeed, I define utility as an emotional phenomenon.

Utility is an emotional phenomenon that is about external events, in the same way that my knowledge that the sky is blue is an internal state of my mind which is about the external sky. Thus you appear to me to be making recipe cake.

In particular, your question as to why I disvalue deaths I don’t know about, presumes not just that utility is something that I can assign only to emotional phenomena, but that it is something I can assign only to emotional phenomena that go on inside my own head. Otherwise I could assign utilities to the deceased’s fear of dying, and all the good experiences the deceased cannot now have, and the deceased’s goal of having those experiences, whether or not I ever knew about them.

However, you sometimes seem to make the correspondence mistake - attributing opposition to life extension to dispositional aspects rather than to circumstances. There is a rational position against life extension, based on costs. Saving young lives is generally cheap. Research into life extension of the old is expensive, and is money diverted from other research. If you add to this a preference for saving those who have had less time to enjoy life (ie the young), then you can rationally argue against life extension research (given a choice, who would you save? The girl of 5 or healthy man of 65? Not a trick question).

I don’t agree with that, but it’s definitely rational. And the more speculative and expensive life extension technologies are, the more rational the argument is. Once we have indefinite life extension technologies cheaply available (or on the cusp of being available) then I foresee a major change in people’s attitudes.

“I just meant that I’m uncomfortable speaking for your utility function when you’re, like, right here.”
So you’re ok with making cardinal utility comparisons across individuals?

“Certainly not stars, unless you count Sol to which I have a certain sentimental attachment.”
Sounds here like it’s not the death that matters but the sadness caused by the death.

“I don’t think cows are people but I’m not totally sure. Chimpanzees seem like they could very plausibly be people.”
I wouldn’t get too caught up on the definition of “person”. Biologists seem to have the species concept down pretty well. However, they have not yet resolved which species are sentient; a probabilistic approach to handle this uncertainty seems appropriate here. Cows are most likely sentient; fish are probably sentient; lobsters and insects, we’re much less sure of.

“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be”
Including humanity’s existence?

“Preferences are states of mind, and need minds to be states of”
I agree. So, if someone dies, and no one is ever sad as a result, you would not attribute negative utility to the event?

“But the death of an existing person is very different from having never lived, and much worse”
You would rather have never lived in the first place than to live a mortal life? Not me.

“for only living people can fear dying and prefer not to die.”
While some lives may very well be worth not living (tortured livestock animals?), many (most?) are worth living, despite what fears they experience regarding death or anything else.

” “With whom would you side if I prefer Fred to not have any preferences about other people?”
Fred.”
So you prefer here that Fred has preferences about other people, even though you prefer that I do not. I don’t follow this logic. This is of course a paradoxical situation, designed to highlight a problem with preferentialism. I do not have a strong solution to this paradox, but alas, I am no preferentialist.

“my morality that people not commit murder”
Would you kill someone in self-defense, or to prevent someone from killing another, or to prevent someone from killing multiple others, if killing this person was the only means of preventing this person from killing you or other(s)? (Related: the trolley problem.)

“rational emotional response”
Forgive me here, but I thought rationality was supposed to be distinct from emotion. Am I wrong?

“I want people to be rational”
Would you prefer someone (including yourself) to be happy and irrational or unhappy and rational? I prefer happy and irrational, and view rationality as good only to the extent to which it brings happiness.

“Utility is an emotional phenomenon that is about external events”
I would not rule out the possibility that utility can be about internal events too, whatever the distinction between internal and external is here. Simply calling utility an emotional phenomenon suffices for me.

“inside my own head”
If we accept that utility is an emotional phenomenon that occurs inside heads, we can say our utility is that which occurs inside our heads while still valuing that utility which occurs inside the heads of others.

I remain unclear as to what you value. Is it something other than the total sum of all utility? If so, what? Also, from this discussion so far I find your transhumanism to be anything but simple. But perhaps it will become more clear yet.

“By that we will be judged.”

Hmm… sounds pretty ominous.
It’s a different topic, and an active debate elsewhere, but I believe that the concept of “free will” is a myth. In humans, the brain directs the nature of the mind, not the other way around.

Your essay, upon a first read, is very clear and straightforward. However, there are few things I don’t exactly agree with–or things you haven’t thought through entirely.

First, what you ignore is that there might be negative consequences for other people the longer certain people live. Will that 150 year old, by living another year, take away resources that the 6 year old will need to live in, say, 20 years— there may be a famine which is induced because all the 150 year olds consumed all the resources to live another two or three years, thus condemning the 6 year old to a horrible death by starvation at age 26. In that case, would it be “good” (not to mention FAIR) to help the 150 year old to live another year if the consequence would be the early death and starvation of the 6 year old?

Even if we keep the discussion simple, the reason why it is actually better to save the life of the six year old instead of the 150 year old (assuming you could only save one of them) is based upon the fact that, up until now, humans have had a relatively short and finite lifespan. Let’s say at the point in time when we are discussing this , the maximium human lifespan was 158 years. Then we could assume that by saving the 150 year old, we could at best gain 8 more “productive” years of life. If we save the 6 year old, then we might expect another 152 life-years of utility, More bang for the buck. (Of course, this is assuming all other things being equal. Would it be better having 152 more years of a morally reprehensible character such as Adolf Hitler– assuming we could know his character at age 6— than 8 more years of Mahatma Gandhi? In that case, one could argue that less life is actually BETTER in that circumstance.)

The only way that these cases could really be considered equal is if humans had an essntially infinite lifespan— then the difference between a 6 year old and a 150 year old would be minimal (say, if humans lived to about 15,000 years.) In this case, it still would be better to save the 6 year old, but not by much.

Another thing you fail to take into account is the “utility function” of the species AS A WHOLE. If no one ever ages, and there is a finite amount of physical resources available on the planet, then that must mean that all procreation must essentially stop in order to limit the population of immortal humans That means that human evolution must stop. In the long run, this means we, as a SPECIES, lose the ability to improve and change, and we may, like the Eloi from the “Time Machine”, no longer be able to compete in a world that is ever changing, and therefore go extinct.

In that case, “more life” for the individual may be a death knell for the species AS A WHOLE (and therefore is bad for the individual, as well.)

Finally, your example as to why it would be better to increase the intelligence of a child with an IQ of 110 to an IQ of 120 if we could, because high IQ is a obviously a “good” thing, is really quite misguided. There are (at least) two reasons this assumption— that “higher IQ” is always a good thing– is not true.

The first, again, is the moral issue. Would it have been better for the world if Adolf Hitler had had an IQ of 185 instead of 125? Would he have made the mistake of invading Russia? Would he have been more careful and systematic and successful with his program of genocide? Would he have succeeded in taking over all of Europe and North America and consolidated his power? Would that have been “good”? If he had had an IQ of 185, his abilities to accomplish these things might have been greater. He might have succeeded.

Even forgetting the moral character of the 110 IQ child, the second point is that by upping the IQ of 110 IQ children we are changing the essential nature of their characters, who they are as unique human individuals. This is different from a child with an IQ of 120 dropping down to 110 because he/she ate lead paint. In that case, this is an injury, again a change in the essential nature of their characters, and thus “bad” in the same way increasing a child’s IQ by 10 points in an artificial way is.

This is like saying that blindness is always a “bad” thing. If Stevie Wonder had not been blind, his hearing would not have developed in such a sensitive manner, he would not have had to rely on it so much, and he might not have become a great musician. Even today, if you could restore his sight with a push of a button, I can almost guarnatee to you that he would refuse your offer. It would change the essential nature of him as a person— and most people don’t want that. They want to be who they are, not something else.

I think that is the main point.

-Greg Bravo

Strange how nobody ever gets into philosophical debates like this when we try and cure malaria. Nobody says “Hey, we shouldn’t cure malaria, because if we do, there might be a famine and people will die anyway.” Also, see http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/tom/?p=18.

“In that case, one could argue that less life is actually BETTER in that circumstance.”

This is a very special case. We do not machine-gun babies, even though they might grow up to be evil, because 99.9% of babies are not evil.

“Another thing you fail to take into account is the “utility function” of the species AS A WHOLE.”

The species does not have a utility function except as a sum or some other mathematical operation over individual utility functions. “The species” does not desire anything independent from what the individuals of that species desire.

“That means that human evolution must stop.”

Which would be a very good thing. Evolution requires mass murder in order to operate. We have technological mechanisms to improve ourselves; we don’t need evolution.

“In the long run, this means we, as a SPECIES, lose the ability to improve and change,”

This sounds very like a cliche. We will still have all our technology to improve ourselves with (technology is much quicker anyway).

“and we may, like the Eloi from the “Time Machine”, no longer be able to compete in a world that is ever changing, and therefore go extinct.”

And of course, with every cliche, comes the Appeal to Figments of the Imagination. See http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/tom/?p=12.

“In that case, “more life” for the individual may be a death knell for the species AS A WHOLE (and therefore is bad for the individual, as well.)”

Funny you keep mentioning Hitler, as he was the one who kept justifying mass murder “for the good of Greater Germany” even if it benefited not a single person within Germany. If you start to work for “the good of some abstract concept” rather than “the good of the individual”, you get into trouble very quickly because abstract concepts don’t argue with you, and so you never learn how nuts you are.

“Would it have been better for the world if Adolf Hitler had had an IQ of 185 instead of 125?”

Again, we talk about Hitler so much because he is a *special case*. We do not machine-gun or pointlessly cripple (what you’re advocating) all Austrian art-loving corporals, even though Hitler was one.

“In that case, this is an injury, again a change in the essential nature of their characters, and thus “bad” in the same way increasing a child’s IQ by 10 points in an artificial way is.”

This is a well-known human cognitive bias called status quo bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias), and in fact the example you just gave was literally a textbook demonstration.

“If Stevie Wonder had not been blind, his hearing would not have developed in such a sensitive manner, he would not have had to rely on it so much, and he might not have become a great musician.”

Yup. So let’s go out there with some knives and sharp sticks and start blinding everybody! Seriously- you cannot argue that doing XYZ is a good thing because of one or two special cases. This is a logical fallacy called the hasty generalization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization).

It really isn’t. Some people already want to kill themselves in their teens, while others want to keep living in their hundreds.

This isn’t a problem with life extension you have, but essentially one with suicide and/or assisted suicide.

Usually issues are worded positive liky ‘live as long as you wish’ rather than the opposite: ‘death as optional’.

Many people are against that option. Suicide and assisted suicide being illegal it is even written into law.

It is a very odd thing, to assume that wanting death is perfectly fine at one age while perfectly horrible at another. In fact, it even goes beyond that, there’s not that sort of middle ground. It essentially FORCES people to live if they are young, and FORCES people to die if they are old. There’s simply no personal freedom at all. I think we really need to take an absolute stance on this issue that does not reak of illogical ageism.

Either being able to choose to kill yourself is okay, no matter what your age (though I’d have a waiting period on it similar to buying guns, and preliminary psychological assessment), or wanting to die is bad at ANY age. Honestly, the silliness of things like hospices where you can go refuse medication for your disease, while they shove people trying to shoot themselves into psych wards, seems ridiculous to me because they’re essentially the same thing.

I understand why the division exists. People believe suicide when your life is good is bad (in the prime of your youth, or health) while suicide when you are suffering (old, have a disease, being tortured/raped) is a more acceptable thing.

I don’t think it’s acceptable, just understandable, becau