Well, if we assume that humans are fundamentally good / inevitably converging to kindness if given enough time… then, yeah, giving someone God-emperor powers is probably going to be good in long term. (If they don’t accidentally make an irreparable mistake.)
On the time scale of current human lifespan, I guess I could point out that some old people are unkind, or that some criminals keep re-offending a lot, so it doesn’t seem like time automatically translates to more kindness.
But an obvious objection is “well, maybe they need 200 years of time, or 1000”, and I can’t provide empirical evidence against that. So I am not sure how to settle this question.
On average, people get less criminal as they get older, so that would point towards human kindness increasing in time. On the other hand, they also get less idealistic, on average, so maybe a simpler explanation is that as people get older, they get less active in general. (Also, some reduction in crime is caused by the criminals getting killed as a result of their lifestyle.)
There is probably a significant impact of hormone levels, which means that we need to make an assumption about how the God-emperor would regulate their own hormones. For example, if he decides to keep a 25 years old human male body, maybe his propensity to violence will match the body?
tl;dr—what kinds of arguments should even be used in this debate?
what kinds of arguments should even be used in this debate?
Ok, now we have a reasonable question. I don’t know, but I provided two argument-sketches that I think are of a potentially relevant type. At an abstract level, the answer would be “mathematico-conceptual reasoning”, just like in all previous instances where there’s a thing that has never happened before, and yet we reason somewhat successfully about it—of which there are plenty examples, if you think about it for a minute.
On average, people get less criminal as they get older, so that would point towards human kindness increasing in time. On the other hand, they also get less idealistic, on average, so maybe a simpler explanation is that as people get older, they get less active in general.
When I read Tsvi’s OP, I was imagining something like a (trans-/post- but not too post-)human civilization where everybody by default has an unbounded lifespan and healthspan, possibly somewhat boosted intelligence and need for cognition / open intellectual curiosity. (In which case, “people tend to X as they get older”, where X is something mostly due to things related to default human aging, doesn’t apply.)
Now start it as a modern-ish democracy or a cluster of (mostly) democracies, run for 1e4 to 1e6 years, and see what happens.
Well, if we assume that humans are fundamentally good / inevitably converging to kindness if given enough time… then, yeah, giving someone God-emperor powers is probably going to be good in long term. (If they don’t accidentally make an irreparable mistake.)
I just strongly disagree with this assumption.
It’s not an assumption, it’s the question I’m asking and discussing.
Ah, then I believe the answer is “no”.
On the time scale of current human lifespan, I guess I could point out that some old people are unkind, or that some criminals keep re-offending a lot, so it doesn’t seem like time automatically translates to more kindness.
But an obvious objection is “well, maybe they need 200 years of time, or 1000”, and I can’t provide empirical evidence against that. So I am not sure how to settle this question.
On average, people get less criminal as they get older, so that would point towards human kindness increasing in time. On the other hand, they also get less idealistic, on average, so maybe a simpler explanation is that as people get older, they get less active in general. (Also, some reduction in crime is caused by the criminals getting killed as a result of their lifestyle.)
There is probably a significant impact of hormone levels, which means that we need to make an assumption about how the God-emperor would regulate their own hormones. For example, if he decides to keep a 25 years old human male body, maybe his propensity to violence will match the body?
tl;dr—what kinds of arguments should even be used in this debate?
Ok, now we have a reasonable question. I don’t know, but I provided two argument-sketches that I think are of a potentially relevant type. At an abstract level, the answer would be “mathematico-conceptual reasoning”, just like in all previous instances where there’s a thing that has never happened before, and yet we reason somewhat successfully about it—of which there are plenty examples, if you think about it for a minute.
When I read Tsvi’s OP, I was imagining something like a (trans-/post- but not too post-)human civilization where everybody by default has an unbounded lifespan and healthspan, possibly somewhat boosted intelligence and need for cognition / open intellectual curiosity. (In which case, “people tend to X as they get older”, where X is something mostly due to things related to default human aging, doesn’t apply.)
Now start it as a modern-ish democracy or a cluster of (mostly) democracies, run for 1e4 to 1e6 years, and see what happens.