From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Jan 08 2003 - 02:48:36 MST
On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 05:45:04PM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Tue, 7 Jan 2003, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> > Couldn't have said it better. PLEASE rethink this awful meme/tag, people.
>
> I think the comments by Damien's friend have some merit. This goes
> fairly deeply to some philisophical topics I sometimes try to touch
> upon. There is no such thing as an objective "better". Better always
> must be entirely subjective (even if you get 99% of the rest of the
> humans on the planet to agree that *your* version of better *really*
> is better).
One can be subjective about improvement without becoming wishy-washy
relativists. I think Freita's subjective volitional health concept is a
good example of how to include a subjective "better" into medicine (IMHO
it may be the most important contribution of _Nanomedicine_ so far!).
But there are better value scales than other, where better can be
measured in a quasi-objective way as promoting happiness (Aristotelian
eudaimonia or Csikszentmihalyi's flow). So while people are free to make
their subjective judgements of their values, we have an educational duty
(?) to help them learn better ways to move towards happiness.
As an example, what about mortality? Many fear being in this state. One
approach is to deny it altogether for some religious explanation away.
Another approach is to try to learn to accept it, to no longer fear it.
And a third is to try to overcome it. Which approach is best? That
depends on your values. But it seems to me that the approach that leads
to the greatest happiness in the long run is the last (assuming it is an
available option), and it can also be combined with one of the other two
for extra comfort.
As for betterhumans, maybe the solution would really be a catchier
slogan than "create the future" at the top of the page, one that
expresses that we want to individually become better and happier.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:35:50 MST