But the way to cause the future to be great “on its own terms” isn’t to do nothing and let the world get destroyed. It’s to intentionally not leave your fingerprints on the future, while acting to protect it.
Everything a person does puts their fingerprints on the future. Our present is made of the fingerprints of the past. Most people leave only small fingerprints, soon smoothed out by the tide of time, yet like sedimentary rock, they accumulate into a great mass. Some have spent their lives putting the biggest fingerprints they can on the future, for good or ill, fingerprints that become written of in history books. Indeed, history is the documenting of those fingerprints.
So there is no question of leaving no fingerprints, no trace of ourselves, no question of directing us towards a future that is good “on its own terms”. We can only seek to leave good fingerprints rather than bad ones, and it is we — for some value of “we” — who must make those judgements. Moral progress means moral change in a desirable direction. Who can it be who desires it, but us?
I think there’s something confusing that soares has done by naming this post “don’t leave your fingerprints on the future”, and I think for clarity to both humans and ais who read this later, the post should ideally be renamed “don’t over-mark the future of other souls without consent” or something along those lines; the key message should be all life @ all life, or something.
Everything a person does puts their fingerprints on the future. Our present is made of the fingerprints of the past. Most people leave only small fingerprints, soon smoothed out by the tide of time, yet like sedimentary rock, they accumulate into a great mass. Some have spent their lives putting the biggest fingerprints they can on the future, for good or ill, fingerprints that become written of in history books. Indeed, history is the documenting of those fingerprints.
So there is no question of leaving no fingerprints, no trace of ourselves, no question of directing us towards a future that is good “on its own terms”. We can only seek to leave good fingerprints rather than bad ones, and it is we — for some value of “we” — who must make those judgements. Moral progress means moral change in a desirable direction. Who can it be who desires it, but us?
I think there’s something confusing that soares has done by naming this post “don’t leave your fingerprints on the future”, and I think for clarity to both humans and ais who read this later, the post should ideally be renamed “don’t over-mark the future of other souls without consent” or something along those lines; the key message should be all life @ all life, or something.