Future ethics

this thread is dedicated to the new ethics coming with technological advancement

ill start with a few points:
-should an advanced AI get citizienship
-should scholars learn the history of alien planets(could be in the dozens)
-when we are able to switch people from gender almost instantly, should we still give children a gender
-what is the border of an intelligent lifeform?

 

Robots are the wrong way to go IMO. Especially when they do everything for us such as cook dinner, play with your children etc. you lose a big chunk of culture. Robots should just do the labour type things we hate such as cleaning sewers and rubbish collection.

If the Earth and human civilization even survive to the point we come into contact with intelligent alien beings, we'd probably screw up the relations anyway then get mass Zealots knocking on our doors.

Most life forms are intelligent. Humans are smart but on a whole I wouldn't say we are intelligent. Look what we are doing to the things which we depend on, which is Earth and every other life form.

People could argue and say a tree isn't intelligent. But how intelligent does a tree really need to be. They have a firm role on this planet as recycling carbon dioxide, providing shelter, using the sun's energy for sustanance and growth. They have accomplished everything they do in a huge respect.
We can utilize the sun's energy, but only like 10%. Trees are much more effiecient than that.
We have things which can suck up carbon dioxide but I doubt we could rival a ''simple tree''.

Why am I talking about trees, I have no idea.

 

I think it's the other way around, we are intelligent but not very smart. It's matter of definition though, the point is the same.

Tree isn't good example imo, think dolphins. They are supposedly one of the most intelligent creatures, but they too don't build cities (even though they're social animals iirc), or tools. And it's not directly because they don't have hands ans such. They don't have them because they never needed them

I also think we'd screw up relations with aliens on first given chance. Of course there could be isolated cases where an alien meets with some more decent people, but if a single alien lifeform were to be found and info released to the public, it would be immiediately taken for all kinds of research. Including the not exactly pleasant ones

 

we most certainly screw up when we meet aliens, i mean, we would try and teach them our ethics

 

we don't have any, it's a myth

 

new point:
what about genetically manipulated children?


my opinion:
what would you give right now to have wings, or to be abe to run for hours in a row without getting tired(REALLY POSSIBLE AT THIS VERY MOMENT), would you deny that option to anyone?

 

You HAD TO give wings as an example. Personally I'd hate to deny such options to anyone, but we all know what humans would do with it. In order to make sure someone is 'suitable' to receive gifts like that, he/she would have to go through psychological tests and whatnot (and of course can't be a criminal) and that just wouldn't work.

As for running, sure, I don't see why would that be impossible, but if you didn't feel tired, there's a high chance you could overdo it and use all your energy up.

However I don't see why shouldn't we be able to change things like eye or hair colour

 

Robots and new development...Well, I think that a hedonistic society where everything is done by robots will be the end of human race. An enlightened tyranny (which all democracies are due to become) with strict control and restriction is ultimately the best way to go. Too much freedom is a bad thing. Its almost like dealing with spoiled children.

Same with Genetic manipulation. We would be no longer human.

 

well, there is a small problem....
it is nearly impossible to change the genetics of a grown-up

 

"it is nearly impossible to change the genetics of a grown-up"

Well, maybe you can't give someone wings, but every cell in your body is subject to change. I would rather be a cyborg anyway. The genetic children may be perfect, but being half robot would put them to shame.

As for the "giving up being human" factor...well, I don't care. If I can be smarter, stronger, and generally better, then I can live with a bit of lost "humanity".

 

I think genetic modification should be used only as a medical treatment. For example, if someone has diabetes, they should be able to undergo genetic modification to cure themselves of it. Same goes for Huntington's and other genetic diseases such as these. I wouldn't mind if everyone was immunized against cancer or radiation or diseases in general. It's like what we did to smallpox, we eradicated it. And with genetic engineering we can eradicate ALL diseases, once technology allows.

The biggest problems I have with these is that no one would know if something was going wrong until it was too late. Say everyone was immunized against all diseases. But the same gene we used to immunize ourselves against diseases triggers an apoptosis and it kills people by the time they reach the age of, say, 40. (Completely random number). And half our planet dies off and there's not enough people left to run the infrastructure and services. Which could result in destruction of the entire species. It's an exaggerated example, but I'm just saying we won't know something went wrong before we could fix it.

 

that's why we need some smaller scale testing, lets say;
every genetic change has 20 years of testing... on 1 million people

 

twenty years?! we don't even have that much

 

If you mean like "human intilligence" then i would say the border would be placed between lifeforms that know they are gonna die, and lifeforms that dont know it. If you look at animals, they dont no they are gonna die, but we humans we know it. I think we now it because we can work with expierences much better then animals, so the border should be there.

 

What do you mean by 'animals don't know they're gonna die' ?

 

They do not know that die, that has been proven by some test looking on how animals react when some of there kind dies.

Or thats atleast what i have heard.

 

Oh I see. If they tested it somehow I'm not going to argue

 

ressurection week, asked a mod if I could bump some ANCIENT threads up a bit to see if there is some life left

So, future ethics
-where is the line between person and non-person for the law?
-are genes to be changed freely?
-what to do with gender identity?


For the first issue, it would seem easiest if you spliced by race. A living human is a person. KetTek, the alien spice trader from æñB▲ã-D is a person. Magnamind, the evil robot overlord, is a despicable person, but a person nontheless. A third category would probably have to be added, for creatures of high intelligence but low culture, giving them protection by law, but not things like right to sue or vote. Dolphins would fit into this category.

This solution becomes an issue when you also look at the second question though. If you can just change your genes, what makes a species a species? Superintelligent dolphins would obviously not fit into the middle category, but just how do you define when they cross over to the next category? It can't possibly be efficient to make them all fill out an IQ-test. Categories also become harder to define hard edges around when you consider people that are superior to humans. Should someone with infinite life who controls a world with his mind, count as heavily as a single human who gets a measly 80 years old? In this short thinking time, I cannot find a solution for this, and I hope that advancement will make me grow smart enough to think of one.

As for Gender identity? I really don't care where people stick it, as long as it's consensual, and they are truthful to one another about what exactly the have been doing to their genes.

 

- I am not following you. I think that a person is clearly defined under the law.
- Depends. If I want to change my genes and I am considered an adult I should be able to do so (unless it makes me directly impact other people such as a gene change after which I would start producing harmful and contagious microganisms) although at the moment we cannot change genes of an entire person. As for tampering with the genes of a fetus I am definetly for fixing genetical diseases such as down syndrom et cetera. I am undecided as to whether or not we should be allowed to play with his entire DNA although I am not dogmatically refusing it.
- What is there to do?

 

Isn't person currently defined as pretty much 'human'?