RE: Shock Level 5 (SL5) - 'The Theory Of Everything'

From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Mon Aug 15 2005 - 10:41:17 MDT


> >While this sort of ethical principle is universal in
> >scope,
> >however, it's not "objective" in any strong sense.
> >Do you agree with this?
> >
> >-- Ben
>
> Yeah, but I'll take the 'Universal Morality'. A UM
> would (in my view) be sufficient to ensure a
> connection between intelligence and friendliness, such
> that any sufficiently smart intelligence would
> automatically become friendly, as I claimed.

Marc,

Suppose one can define something like "pattern is good" or "increase in the
amount of pattern is good" (or something similar, framed in your preferred
vocabulary) as a universal morality.

What does this say about Friendliness in the sense of friendliness to
humans?

Nothing, it would seem.

If there are other patterns that are better than us according to this
abstract morality (and surely there are), then this universal morality will
not be a particularly friendly one...

In terms of my ethics of "growth, joy and choice", your proposed univeral
morality seems closely related to growth, and perhaps (if one adds some
hypotheses about the relation of emotion to universal mind) to joy, but it
seems to say nothing about choice -- which is key for connecting "growth,
joy and choice" to Friendliness.

-- Ben



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