Anders Sandberg, <asa@nada.kth.se>, writes:
> In this scenario I assumed the future mind would be me minus the
> awareness of the experiences being simulation. I don't know if that
> really can be viewed as a different person than me, after all the
> difference is just a lack of knowledge. Do I have the right of putting
> myself through torture? Obviously yes. Do I have the right to
> temporarily erase my knolwedge of French Classicist drama and then
> subjecting myself to torture? Seems to be very much the same as
> before. What if I erase my knowledge of the torture being simulation
> and bounded in time and then subject myself to it? What is the
> difference here?
I find this a fascinating discussion. In the future it will be possible
and necessary to consider certain mental architectures, things which I do
in my own (possibly augmented) mind, as immoral. This is the issue which
Greg Burch raised recently as one of the "unsolved problems" we face.
In an earlier debate, Billy Brown proposed that certain kinds of minds,
those with a sufficiently distributed structure and autonomy, but with
goals established by a central "will", would be de facto slavery and
hence immoral.
My view is that we cannot be led too blindly by our intuitions in these
matters, because they are based too much on our present-day, limited
mental perspective. We should squarely face up to some counterintuitive
possibilities.
Our own minds, today, here and now, may have immoral mental architectures.
We are composed of parts subordinate to a whole. By some moral codes,
arguably including extropianism, we have a mandate to free all parts
of our minds and allow them to find their own destinies. Granted,
we cannot do this yet, any more than we can make ourselves immortal,
but we should consider the possibility that once we have this power,
we are obligated to use it.
It may also be that we do not have the rights Anders lists above, such
as to put ourselves through torture. This may be an immoral act, seen
from a larger perspective. It causes unnecessary pain and raises the
amount of suffering in the universe.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:03:59 MDT