Jakub Supeł
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Jakub Supeł has not written any posts yet.
Jakub Supeł has not written any posts yet.
Quite apart from the application of this argument to AI, the example of a gun shop/manufacturer is quite bad. One reason is that passing on the negative externalities of selling a gun without passing on the positive externalities* (which is never done in practice and would be very difficult to do) creates an assymetry that biases the cost of firearms to be higher than it would have been in rational circumstances.
(*) Positive externalities of manufacturing and selling a gun include a deterrent effect on crime ("I would rather not try to rob that store, the clerk might be armed"), direct prevention of crime by armed citizens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use) or very strong positive effects of population being armed in extreme (rare) scenarios such as foreign invasion or the government turning tyrannical. I would suspect you wouldn't want to reward firearms manufacturers for all these positive outcomes (or at least it would be difficult, since these effects are very hard to quantify).
I agree! I don't think consciousness can be further analyzed or broken down into its constituent parts. It's just a fundamental property of the universe. It doesn't mean, however, that human consciousness has no explanation. (An explanation for human consciousness would be nice, because otherwise we have two kinds of things in the world: the physical and the mental, and none of these would be explicable in terms of the other, except maybe via solipsism.) Human consciousness, along with everything physical, is well explained by Christian theism, according to which God created the material world, which is inert and wholly subject to him, and then created mankind in His image. Man belongs... (read more)
The statement that they are potential lives is incorrect. An embryo is already alive and, since it has continuity through time with an adult human being (obviously actual living human), it has human identity as well. Therefore, it is a living human being.
"Only one life can come out of this process" is also incorrect. This is like having 4 teenagers and choosing 3 of them to be shot, and then concluding that "only one adult can come out of this process, therefore the 3 teenagers are merely potential lives and can be destroyed".
Why would inherent moral worth depend on the number of neurons or complexity of the brain?
My God... The discarded embryos are human beings with all the associated moral worth. The procedure described in the post does not eliminate diseases or increase the iq of a child. It merely kills the humans who are more likely to develop a disease or those who are likely to have lower iq.
This is evil.
no, why?
the existence of decision-making beings is the best thing ever
I didn't say it's the best thing ever. Why are you misrepresenting what I said?
Effects caused by natural laws aren't "caused by God". They are caused by natural laws. It's not the same thing. God did create natural laws, but they serve a number of good purposes as I began to outline above.
what caused the evils of the Thirty Year War?
Struggle for power between the Habsburgs and France?
Oh, an one more thing. My updated premise 2 is:
2'. Whenever John says that X, then X. ( ∀ X:proposition, says(John, X) ⇒ X )
Note that X here is not a statement (grammatically valid sentence?), but a proposition. John can express it however he likes: by means of written word, by means of a demonstration or example, by means of a telepathy, etc. There is no need, specifically, to convert a proposition to a string or vice versa; as long as (1) is true and we most likely understand what proposition John is trying to convey, we will most likely believe in the correct normative proposition (that, if expressed in a statement, requires an "ought").
"It's all for the best in the end" is not a good argument, no. Such things are justified because the kind of world that serves the purposes God had in mind when creating it (for example, world in which moral agents exist and in which their choices are meaningful, i.e. make a practical difference) requires regular and predictable natural laws, and these (again, in the presence of meaningfully moral agents) have the side-effect of causing suffering from time to time. People have the option of committing good or committing evil, and these options are open to them only because certain actions lead to consequences that are considered good or evil: for example,... (read more)
There are some a posteriori reasons though - there are numerous studies that reject a causal link between the number of firearms and homicides, for example. This indicates that firearm manufacturers do not cause additional deaths, and therefore it would be wrong to only internalize the negative costs.
... (read more)