Re: Raising kids [was Re: Freedom or death? ]

Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Fri, 15 Aug 1997 16:06:48 -0700 (PDT)


Hal Finney writes:
>In the future, it will be possible to create all sorts of minds, with
>varying degrees of consciousness, intelligence, sentience, etc. These
>can be created in a state in which they are under the control of the
>creator, who can mistreat them as he wishes. ...
>Can we expect to do anything about this? Should we try?

I suggest social shunning of people who seem to be torturing creatures
substantially different from themselves. A positive prospect is that
the most useful experiments will probably be best done on copies of
yourself - that gives you the most info about improving yourself.
So experimenting on creatures very different from yourself is already
suspicious. Especially if those other creatures are smart enough do
decide for themselves what experiments would help them improves
themselves. The problem is experiments on "dumb" different creatures.

Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/