From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jul 19 2003 - 02:27:10 MDT
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 07:55:40PM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> > Historical villains have killed millions of people in
> > terrible causes, but the idea that it's too inconvenient to think about
> > the subject, and that dropping nukes would save time and aggravation, may
> > well represent a new low for the human species.
>
> Ah, but the debate must change if the "killing of millions of people"
> is in the name of a "good" cause.
Ah. So you do not think that any of the historical villains thought they
had really good causes?
Creating a free and egalitarian world is a nice sounding goal, but
ideologies claiming this have killed tens of millions of people in the
20th century. And I would argue that it was not because they were all
corrupted; quite a bit of the killing was seen as regretable necessity
in order to save all the others. Even worse track record can be found
among ideologies that seek some future or non-material good goal, like
salvation or racial survival - here the killing was not even seen as
regrettable.
Good causes are plentiful, but they are not worth getting *others*
killed for.
> And the "valuation of lives" goes to the crux of the matter. Nick
> in his paper suggested there were some alternate perspectives
> of utilitarian evaluations, Anders expanded on this quite a bit in
> his comments (much to my education).
>
> But the problem is not simple and it doesn't go away (just because we
> find the discussion repulsive).
This is true. From time to time we do get into the uncomfortable
situation where we might have to take actions that kill innocent people
in order to (say) safeguard ourselves from terrorism. It is at that
point we need good principles to guide us.
As an example, I have several times argued against pre-emptive strikes
both on this list and in off-list discussion (e.g. my debate with Nick
on the Berlin Transvision about existential risks) since I consider it a
very bad principle to follow ethically and the likely destabilizing
effects of following it (even when you do not strike others know you
might, and it is better to prepare - in secret). That is one principle
discussion that has become rather important lately.
Evaluating the "value" of human lives is another issue - even framing a
choice in terms of comparing the value of group A versus group B is a
decision with rather deep ethical implications (it does imply that
humans have values that can be somehow compared, a position not all
ethical views accept).
In practice, when we sit in the war room and the Chief of Staff asks us
what to do, we will likely use the usual human mix of principles,
prejudices, assumptions and more-and-less rational thinking to make
strategic decisions. The thing to aim for is to have done as much good
thinking before that point as possible, so that the final decision is
influenced by ideas of some depth.
> But the point I am trying to get at is *when* the negentropic losses
> are acceptable? Is the saving of a single human life worth a sacrifice
> by humanity? In medicine this is known as "triage" -- and it involves
> some very difficult decisions as to how one optimizes who one saves.
Exactly. I don't think the current framing of the discussion will help
it, but it needs to be looked at from many perspectives.
Looking at societies from a direct triage analogy, we have the direct
care societies (might do well if we help them *now*), delayed care
(might get better on their own or if we help them later) and the
unsalvageable societies (we cannot help them). So from this perspective
we set up criteria about what we can do (for example, do we have
resources to replace governments, do nation building, change culture etc
and how much can we do it?) and then evaluate where to send in aid.
Elements from psychiatric emergency triage can be brought in to analyse
the issue of aggressiveness and threat.
Hmm, this might actually be worth looking at in more depth. I'm not that
well read in emergency medicine, but there is some interesting analogies
here. Not to mention the medical philosophy discussions underlying
triage principles.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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