Boldly Go! » Philosophy

Is It Okay to Eat Babies?

J. Alden Page — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:01:43 +0000

Three World’s Collide is one of the most interesting short stories I’ve ever read. The author Eliezer Yudkowsky has been posting the eight parts of the story on a daily basis. Today he posted the first part of an alternate ending. It’s a quick read, and it brings up some interesting points.

In this story, the survival of two sentient species depends on how a spaceship full of Humans prioritize three factors: survival of the unmodified Human species, survival of sentient life, and being happy. I think the choice the shipmembers are faced with is very representative of the present. We are already running into situations where we have to pick which of these factors prioritize, and the importance of choosing between these factors is only going to magnify over the next few decades. I touched a little bit on why it’s important to pick whether Human survival or sentient survival should prioritize in “Gods and Monsters“.

The Setting

Mankind has recently begun traveling long distances into space, and a Human spaceship accidentally bumps into two alien ships. Both alien species have been around roughly as long as Humans.

The first alien race we meet ends up being nicknamed “The Babyeaters”. This crystalline race bases their morality on the fact that they eat their own babies. The Babyeaters produce hundreds of babies when they mate. In order to maximize the number of children that survive, most of these babies are eaten. The weakest children are selected, and the most fit children are allowed to survive. These babies are sentient and even act much like Human children, and will run from their parents in an effort not to be eaten. Additionally, because of their anatomy the heads of the children are slowly digested and undergo excruciating pain for months before they are killed. Their species has been doing this for over a million years.

The importance of this moral is what has brought this species out of a divided and weak past, and into being a unified and strong civilization. Babyeaters who do not eat babies are killed, it is considered the worst possible offense. Over this million year tradition “To eat babies” has become synonymous with “Good”. Along this vein, “mercy” is synonymous with “evil”. Their morality prioritizes their own species survival, and has no qualms whatsoever about killing sentient life or undergoing pain in order to survive. While this may make the Babyeaters sounds like a supremely evil race, they are on the whole a polite species who wish to make friends not enemies.

Shortly after meeting this first species, a second ship arrives with a race who we end up nicknaming “Superhappies”. This race is essentially blobs that float around in liquid. Their basis for morality is that everyone should be happy. Pleasure is good, and pain is the equivalent of evil. The Superhappies view Humans as immoral, because they have the ability to eliminate pain through genetic engineering but have not done so. The Superhappies wish to modify both the Babyeaters and Humans so that both species are happy and free from pain.

The Choice

If being happy prioritizes, then Humans should ally with the Superhappies. Both the Babyeaters and Humans would be modified, so that all three species would be pain free and perfectly happy. If the survival of the Human species prioritizes, then Humans should cause the sun to go supernova. This would destroy all three ships and kill billions of Humans, but many Humans would survive and their would be a chance of the Human identity remaining intact in the future. If the survival of sentient species prioritizes, then once again Humans should ally with the Superhappies. That is if you assume that the technological superiority of the Superhappies would increase the chances of survival for both the Humans and Babyeaters. Allying with the Babyeaters isn’t really an option, because the Babyeaters are so technogically inferior that they would likely lose to the Superhappies.

So Humans have two outcomes to choose between: 1. Ally with the Superhappies, causing both the Babyeaters and Humans to become happy and pain free 2. Cause the star to go supernova, preserving the individuality of the Human race. Which of those two would you choose and why? Can you think of another option that leads to a different outcome?

Distorted Perceptions

mistasteez — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:31:40 +0000

I think oftentimes, the perceptions people have are inconsistent with what we would call reality. We spend our entire lives trying to figure out what other people think of us, failing to realize that they are doing the exact same thing. We all suffer from the insecurity of not knowing our exact place in the world and most conscious individuals have (at one time or another) pondered the meaning of life.

I would like to think that the decisions we make can affect the course of our lives (for better or worse) and that we all have some special purpose, but most often, I just feel like an ant in a giant ant hill. Am I doing what I want or am I helping someone else fulfill their dream? Its hard to tell. Humans are selfish actors, each playing a role to fulfill some need or desire and that is the reality we often don’t want to believe. Dreams and the idea that we can live the life we want to if we work really hard is looking more and more like a croc of shit to me.

Reality is cold and harsh, some have and some have not. There is no rhyme or reason to it and there is no purpose, it just is. As depressing as that sounds, I feel that I must accept it as a rational person. I would prefer to see things for how they really are, rather than create my own alternate reality. However, forcing yourself to accept this truth leads to inevitable depression, so the only thing to do is delude yourself as little a possible while retaining enough hope to continue.

If Earth Had 100 People

J. Alden Page — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:45:56 +0000

If you are reading this article, you are probably a part of the luckiest 3% of the world’s population.

(Watch with better quality)

Interesting Points:

Six people would own 59% of the wealth, while 53 people would live off 2.00$(U.S.) a day or less. Thirteen people would be starving to death, and 43 people wouldn’t have basic sanitation. Most sad of all, we would spend over 100$ trying to kill a neighbor for every 1$ we spend trying to help.

If you stumbled on a village of small, blue people with these characteristics, what would you think? If you observed 6 Smurfanoids were hording most of the resources while 13 Smurfanoids were starving to death; you would probably conclude that people in this village are only worried about themselves. You would also conclude that they are irrationally violent, as 100 times more resources are spent trying to kill each other than trying to help each other.

I don’t think anyone would want to be a member of this village. In fact, you probably would want to stay far away from these villagers.

In many ways we are still an irrational world full of tribes fighting each other. We’ve definitely improved. The average person is better off than they’ve ever been. But, we still have a ways to go.

What can be done?

Research from the human genome project suggests that genetically we are all 99.9% the same. We need to start looking at ourselves as a unified species, instead of only identifying ourselves with subgroups. I think much of the existent division exists because of political and religious organizations, which convince their members they are superior. This is done to the point where killing people who do not belong to your organization is justified. A more humble view of life needs to be propagated.

We also need to be more charitable. Society idolizes the most wealthy instead of the most generous. In the world’s current condition, having an excess of frivolous wealth centered around an individual should be viewed negatively.

Improvement requires more than knowledge and sympathy. We need to provide service that improves our condition and actively oppose harmful world-views.

Purpose of Life?

J. Alden Page — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:34:07 +0000

It’s been almost a month now since I’ve posted. I sincerely apologize. Life has been busy, I’ve been too wore out to think and have been undergoing an identity crisis of a “What the fuck should I be doing with my life?” nature.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose of life. I used to think the purpose of life was happiness. Happiness is just a bunch of chemicals, and a happy state can be created artificially. Someone who is perfectly happy would not live very long, because desire is necessary for survival. Desire stems from not being perfectly happy.

One could argue that the purpose in life should be to maximize the amount of happiness experienced over a lifetime. This would make longevity important, and would give a reason to be happy without being completely happy. But, it wouldn’t provide a reason for keeping society alive. That would require changing the goal to maximizing society’s happiness. But, why should anyone care whether or not other individuals are happy?

Steve Pavlina wrote a post about how to find your purpose in life. The method he describes is essentially writing down as many possible purposes as you can think of until you write something that strikes a chord. The claim is that it should take about 20 minutes to find your purpose, but that it could take longer.

I tried this method about a year ago. After a couple of hours, I was still purposeless. I wrote it off as being silly and didn’t give it a second thought. Recently, I stumbled across his post again and decided to give it another shot. I wrote possible purposes for 4-5 hours. The next day I analyzed the purposes, and I found one that makes sense to me.

The purpose of life is the survival of consciousness.

I think consciousness gives the universe meaning, rather than thinking the universe gives meaning to consciousness. A chair doesn’t define you. But, your perceptions give the chair a meaning. You perceive its purpose, whether it is soft or hard, beautiful or ugly. This is still true when looking at the sky or even at other planets.

Meaning is an internal property of the observer. No meaning is applied to an object if an object can in no way be perceived. It follows that the existence of meaning requires conscious observers.

Something as complicated as a purpose or goal requires that things have meaning. No consciousness = No meaning = No purpose. This means that if there is a purpose and meaning in the universe, that purpose and meaning requires consciousness.

So the purpose of life? Ty to keep consciousness alive in the present and make it as fit as possible for the future. I think because meaning exists for the thinker, an individual can give life any meaning that can be thought. A meaningless universe sounds boring and undesirable to me, so I think the survival of consciousness is a good purpose.

The survival fitness of consciousness depends on abundance, diversity, adaptability, continuous creation of new conscious beings, and probably a large number of other things.

Grains of Consciousness

J. Alden Page — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:41:36 +0000

We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

Robert M. Prisig

Christianity – Harmful to Our Future

J. Alden Page — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 03:34:06 +0000

Chrisitianiy is the most popular religion in the world. In the U.S., over 80% of the population is Christian. The majority of Christians think the world is going to end soon. This poses a large hurdle when trying to make preparations for the future.

We are starting to run into potentially devastating problems, whose solutions require long term planning. Global warming, limited resources, foreign policy, and many if not all of our other needed improvements are adversely affected if you aren’t thinking ahead farther than 50 years.

We are struggling to have a serious discussion about our current problems. How are we going to plan for future dilemmas? One example is the effect of genetic engineering and cloning on our gene pool. Topics like these aren’t discussed enough, and when they are discussed, they usually aren’t taken seriously. This is despite the fact these are near future problems whose solutions will shape society.

Christianity isn’t just harmful in terms of not thinking long term, it is harmful in shaping our present way of thinking. Many sects of Christianity are actively anti-science. It amazes me that we are still debating evolution. I worked in a lab for about a year, inserting genes into S. Aureus bacteria to figure out which of its proteins aid in uptaking heme. Heme uptake is vital for the survival of many types of bacteria, so stopping heme uptake could be an effective way of fighting infections. I’ve used the primers, ran the gels, and grown the petri dishes. I know that the building blocks of life can be manipulated. I also know that these blocks are inherited and change over time.

There is overwhelming evidence of evolution. Scientists have seen bacteria evolve significant mutations in the lab, and genetic drift is a commonly observed and indisputable phenomena. In fact the more we learn about genetics, the more we see how perfectly it backs up evolution. You would be hard pressed to find a geneticist, biologist, or even a reputable scientist who doesn’t believe in evolution. Our understanding that has stemmed from the theory of evolution is responsible for new medicines and genetic diseases being engineered away. Heck, most of the food we buy at the grocery store has been modified using our understanding of genetics. Yet, a large percent of the population happily reap the benefits of the science, while telling the scientists they are wrong.

The anti-evolution debate is reminiscent of the belief that earth is the center of the universe. In both situations, not accepting the truth is based on ego instead of logic. It makes the earth less special if it is not the center of the universe, even if it makes more sense mathematically. It also makes humans seem less special if we evolved from single-cell life, instead of being the supreme organism, instantaneously created to look the same as god.

I realize many christians believe in evolution, and some do not believe the world will end soon. But it is the “faith” based thinking which christianity perpetuates that is keeping these beliefs alive. Lots of people are insulted by anti-christian talk. But, it’s time to leave the dark ages. I think tolerance towards christianity is part of the problem. Christian ideas should be weighed on the same scale as all other ideas. The evidence isn’t their, and the group-thinking and anti-science ideals are harmful. The world needs scientists coming up with solutions, not zealots waiting for the end of the world.

Carl Sagan-Science Ignorance Will Lead to Destruction

J. Alden Page — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:18:40 +0000

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Carl Sagan

Make Decisions Based on Means or Consequence?

J. Alden Page — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:39:52 +0000

When deciding what decisions should be made in the future, it’s important to analyze what aspects of a decision hold value.

Here is an interesting moral dilemma that was created by Philippa Foot.

A runaway trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people who have been tied down in its path. If nothing happens, they will be killed. Fortunately, you have a switch which would divert the trolley to a different track. Unfortunately, the other track has one person tied down to it. Should you flip the switch?

According to the results found in this study, about 77% of people will choose to pull the switch.

Here is a situation with the same consequences, where only 36% of the poll takers choose to sacrifice one in order to kill five.

A trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?

Here is another popular ethical dilemma. This scenario leads to the same consequences, yet, only 2% of the population will choose to kill one person in order to save five.

A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no-one would suspect the doctor. Should the doctor sacrifice the man to save his other patients?

Here are the results from the link above.

Question                              Yes No
surgeon                                2     98
fat man                                30    70
Pull switch to save 5             77    23
Pull switch to save 10           82    18
Pull switch to save 15           83    17
Pull switch to save 20           83    17

% with this response triple:

——-flip switch?   push fat man?     sacrifice traveler for organs?
42.6          Y                   N                                  N
29.8          Y                   Y                                  N
20.6          N                   N                                  N
5.0            Y                   Y                                  Y
0.7            Y                   N                                  Y
0.7            N                   Y                                  Y
0.7            N                   Y                                  N

It is obvious that means matters to most of the population. Granted, there are some inherent inaccuracies in this survey. It is a small population size, and it doesn’t proportionally represent people from all walks of life. Still, a difference of 2 percent and 77 percent indicates that importance is placed on means.

We’ve established that generally people take means into consideration when making a decision. Is it logical to place importance on means?

I think the answer to this is yes/no. Logically, consequence is all that matters. Consequence is the long-term affect that will permanently alter things. A means is temporary, so it is potentially infinitely less important. But, means inevitably leads to consequences. This is why I think if different means lead to the same consequence, the consequence is what should be considered.

However, different means will almost always lead to different consequences. If not directly, then indirectly.

The doctor scenario goes against beneficial societal thinking in many ways. It requires killing an innocent person in cold blood and taking out their organs. A doctor is viewed as someone you can trust with your life to do their best to heal you. And personally killing an innocent person is an act that only the outcasts of society commit.

These views are beneficial. If we didn’t trust our doctors, or thought that a normal person could kill an innocent, this would lead to huge problems. Granted, this scenario specifically says that no one will find out about it. But, that kind of certainty rarely exists in real life. This is why a willingness to commit such an atrocity would be detrimental.

In conclusion, I think consequence is what matters. However, the effects of crossing moral boundaries need to be considered. While consequence may be somewhat immortal, if ignoring means was a consistent practice, it would also have a kind of immortality. Thus, the reason means should not be ignored is because harmful means can often lead to harmful consequences.

Gene Roddenberry- Scifi is a Method for Thinking

J. Alden Page — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:59:18 +0000

For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

Gene Roddenberry

What Causes Morality?

J. Alden Page — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 04:09:03 +0000

Before jumping into what might cause morality, I want to clarify what I mean by morality.

Morality is doing what benefits the people around you. Immorality is hurting others.

The three most commonly pointed at culprits when discussing why people behave morally are: society, religion and innate goodness.

1. Society: Many people believe that morality is taught. We are born amoral, and then learn morality through our parents, teachers, friends and by adhering to the law.

Evidence For: Examples of learning morals through a teacher, friend or parent.

Evidence Against: Society can encourage extreme cruelty, such as the attempted genocide of the Jewish race.

2. Religion: Another common belief is that people behave morally because of religion. This view can be based on the belief that religion is divinely inspired, or that religion is a tool resulting from either society or innate goodness.

Evidence For: Often teaches morality and encourages moral service.

Evidence Against: Responsible for holy wars and terrorism..

3. Innate Goodness: Some people think we are born with a desire to help other people, and with a sense of guilt about hurting other people.

Evidence For: Altruistic behavior that isn’t the result of being taught. Some people who are brought up in bad situations and still end up good.

Evidence Against: Innate violent behavior. For example, a young kid raised by moral parents but still vandalizes and is violent.

It seems clear that all three of these play a role in morality. Which, if any, is the primary basis for morality? To test which one of these primarily causes morality, you would have to have an environment where only one of these causes has an influence.

Since it is near impossible to eliminate any of these factors, this leaves this topic very open to debate.

What’s your opinion?

Poll: What is the Primary Reason People are Moral?

Poll Results