Im a person who is unusually eager to bite bullets when it comes to ethical thought experiments. Evolved vs. created moral patients is a new framework for me and I’m trying to think how much bullet I’d be willing to bite when it comes to privileging evolution. Especially if the future could include a really large number of created entities exhibiting agentic behavior relative to evolved ones.
I can imagine a spectrum of methods of creation that resemble evolution to various degrees. A domesticated dog seems more “created” and thus “purposed” by the evolved humans than a wolf, who can’t claim a creator in the same way, but they seem to be morally equal to me, at least in this respect.
Similarly, if a person with desirable traits is chosen or chooses to be cloned, than the clones still seem to me to have the same moral weight as a normal human offspring, even though they are in some sense more purposed or artificially selected for than a typical child.
Of course, any ethical desideratum is going to have messy examples and edge cases, but I feel like I’m going to have a hard time applying this ethical framework when thinking about the future where the lines between created and evolved blur and where consequences are scaled up.
I look forward to reading the other entries in the sequence and will be sure to update this comment if I find I’ve profoundly missed the point.
On the wider set of cases you hint at, my current view would be that there are only two cases that I’m ethically comfortable with:
an evolved sapient being with the usual self-interested behavior for that that our ethical system grants moral patient status (by default, roughly equal moral patient status, subject to some of the issues discussed in Part 5)
an aligned constructed agent whose motivations are entirely creator-interested and actively doesn’t want moral patient status (see Part 1 of this sequence for a detailed justification of this)
Everything else: domesticated animals, non-aligned AIs kept in line by threat of force, slavery, uploads, and so forth, I’m (to varying degrees obviously) concerned about the ethics of, but haven’t really thought several of those through in detail. Not that we currently have much choice about domesticated animals, but I feel that at a minimum by creating them we take on a responsibility for them: it’s now our job to shear all the sheep, for example.
Yes, I agree, domesticated animals are a messy edge case. They were evolved, thus they have a lot of self-interested drives and behaviors all through their nature. Then we started tinkering with them by selective breeding, and started installing creator-interested (or in this case it would be more accurate to say domesticator-interested) behavioral patterns and traits in them, so now they’re a morally uncomfortable in-between case, mostly evolved but with some externally-imposed modifications. Dogs, for instance, have a mutation to a gene that is also similarly mutated in a few humans, and in us causes what is considered to be a mental illness called Williams-Beuren Syndrome, which causes you to basically make friends with strangers very quickly after meeting them. Modern domestic sheep have a mutation which makes them unable to shed their winter fleece, so they need to be sheared once a year. Some of the more highly-bred cat and dog breeds have all sorts of medical issues due to traits we selectively bred them for because we though they looked cool: e.g. Persian or sphinx cats’ coats, bulldogs’ muzzles, and so forth. (Personally I have distinct moral qualms about some of this.)
Im a person who is unusually eager to bite bullets when it comes to ethical thought experiments. Evolved vs. created moral patients is a new framework for me and I’m trying to think how much bullet I’d be willing to bite when it comes to privileging evolution. Especially if the future could include a really large number of created entities exhibiting agentic behavior relative to evolved ones.
I can imagine a spectrum of methods of creation that resemble evolution to various degrees. A domesticated dog seems more “created” and thus “purposed” by the evolved humans than a wolf, who can’t claim a creator in the same way, but they seem to be morally equal to me, at least in this respect.
Similarly, if a person with desirable traits is chosen or chooses to be cloned, than the clones still seem to me to have the same moral weight as a normal human offspring, even though they are in some sense more purposed or artificially selected for than a typical child.
Of course, any ethical desideratum is going to have messy examples and edge cases, but I feel like I’m going to have a hard time applying this ethical framework when thinking about the future where the lines between created and evolved blur and where consequences are scaled up.
I look forward to reading the other entries in the sequence and will be sure to update this comment if I find I’ve profoundly missed the point.
On the wider set of cases you hint at, my current view would be that there are only two cases that I’m ethically comfortable with:
an evolved sapient being with the usual self-interested behavior for that that our ethical system grants moral patient status (by default, roughly equal moral patient status, subject to some of the issues discussed in Part 5)
an aligned constructed agent whose motivations are entirely creator-interested and actively doesn’t want moral patient status (see Part 1 of this sequence for a detailed justification of this)
Everything else: domesticated animals, non-aligned AIs kept in line by threat of force, slavery, uploads, and so forth, I’m (to varying degrees obviously) concerned about the ethics of, but haven’t really thought several of those through in detail. Not that we currently have much choice about domesticated animals, but I feel that at a minimum by creating them we take on a responsibility for them: it’s now our job to shear all the sheep, for example.
Yes, I agree, domesticated animals are a messy edge case. They were evolved, thus they have a lot of self-interested drives and behaviors all through their nature. Then we started tinkering with them by selective breeding, and started installing creator-interested (or in this case it would be more accurate to say domesticator-interested) behavioral patterns and traits in them, so now they’re a morally uncomfortable in-between case, mostly evolved but with some externally-imposed modifications. Dogs, for instance, have a mutation to a gene that is also similarly mutated in a few humans, and in us causes what is considered to be a mental illness called Williams-Beuren Syndrome, which causes you to basically make friends with strangers very quickly after meeting them. Modern domestic sheep have a mutation which makes them unable to shed their winter fleece, so they need to be sheared once a year. Some of the more highly-bred cat and dog breeds have all sorts of medical issues due to traits we selectively bred them for because we though they looked cool: e.g. Persian or sphinx cats’ coats, bulldogs’ muzzles, and so forth. (Personally I have distinct moral qualms about some of this.)