. A literal reading of the Bible leads to ludicrous conclusions, but if one perceives that the game is all or nothing, then perhaps one must assert the truth value of Genesis as if it was a scientific treatise.
I think the “all or nothing” thing is a very important insight. I’ve often found myself profoundly disturbed by my inability to solve some bizarre moral dilemma (something really weird, like “If you had the power to perfectly control what sort of personality types people were born with, what is the optimum mixture of personalities to create?”) and felt like my inability to solve these problems somehow puts all of ethics in doubt. It’s like I feel that not knowing the proper way to behave in a bizarre science-fictional moral dilemma means that there is no reason to help people, save lives, and do other obviously good things. Even though I know it’s irrational, it sometimes makes me physically sick. I have to keep reminding myself that my beliefs should be more robust than that, that a belief system so fragile that it can shatter with one tiny inconsistency is not one worth having.
I imagine that this is how fundamentalists must feel when they spot an inconsistency in one of their sacred texts.
It’s like I feel that not knowing the proper way to behave in a bizarre science-fictional moral dilemma means that there is no reason to help people, save lives, and do other obviously good things.
An analogy would be feeling that if you can’t solve the Fermat’s last theorem, then there is no reason to believe that 2+2=4.
A completely reasonable answer to “if you had power to do X, what exactly would you do” is “I would start doing reseach on consequences of X, and only after having reliable results I would decide”. And if the other person says “well, I want you to answer now”, just say “if you want me to answer without having critical information, you are not expecting a perfect solution, right?”.
If you had the power to perfectly control what sort of personality types people were born with, what is the optimum mixture of personalities to create?
I don’t know the answer to this question but that’s because I don’t have a superhuman understanding of psychology. I don’t see how it poses any moral problems.
With my very limited current layperson’s knowledge, in terms of the big 5 I would probably increase Openness and Conscientiousness, leave Agreeableness and Extraversion at current rates, and decrease Neuroticism.
The question I’m trying to frame is, if you have the power to choose what preferences people would have, what would you choose? Obviously you’d increase Conscientiousness and decrease Neuroticism, because they generally determine how good you are at fulfilling your preferences, not what your preferences are. Increasing Openness would probably also be good because it would help prevent people from being jerks to those who are different, and I think that we would desire anyone we create to want to behave morally.
But what kind of preferences would you give people? Would you give them a diverse variety, or make them homogenous? Would you keep the current personality distribution the same or would you, for instance, make more nerds and less jocks? Would you pick one ideal person and make all the future generations of the world clones of them? You might say you need a variety of people for society to function, but would that mean that if we had an FAI to do all the work for us that we should make people more homogenous? If you created incredibly unambitious people who only preferred to exist and nothing else would you have created a utopia of 100% preference satisfaction?
I think I’ve figured out that we should create people whose preferences are at least as ambitious as a normal humans, boredom is good after all. And obviously we should create moral beings. And at the very least a good portion of the creatures we create should have fairly human-like emotions. We should definitely not create any sociopaths. I suspect that creating a wide variety of personality types is good, if only because novelty is good. But what is the proper mix of personalities? How many go-getters, how many artists, how many dreamers, how many down-to-earths, how many nerds, how many jocks, etc.
I suspect there is probably more than one right answer. And for now I’m trying to be content with that, because I’m beginning to think the anxiety it causes me might be symptomatic of some sort of serious mental health problem. I don’t think most of the people on this site get heartburn from thinking about this sort of stuff.
I think the “all or nothing” thing is a very important insight. I’ve often found myself profoundly disturbed by my inability to solve some bizarre moral dilemma (something really weird, like “If you had the power to perfectly control what sort of personality types people were born with, what is the optimum mixture of personalities to create?”) and felt like my inability to solve these problems somehow puts all of ethics in doubt. It’s like I feel that not knowing the proper way to behave in a bizarre science-fictional moral dilemma means that there is no reason to help people, save lives, and do other obviously good things. Even though I know it’s irrational, it sometimes makes me physically sick. I have to keep reminding myself that my beliefs should be more robust than that, that a belief system so fragile that it can shatter with one tiny inconsistency is not one worth having.
I imagine that this is how fundamentalists must feel when they spot an inconsistency in one of their sacred texts.
An analogy would be feeling that if you can’t solve the Fermat’s last theorem, then there is no reason to believe that 2+2=4.
A completely reasonable answer to “if you had power to do X, what exactly would you do” is “I would start doing reseach on consequences of X, and only after having reliable results I would decide”. And if the other person says “well, I want you to answer now”, just say “if you want me to answer without having critical information, you are not expecting a perfect solution, right?”.
I don’t know the answer to this question but that’s because I don’t have a superhuman understanding of psychology. I don’t see how it poses any moral problems.
With my very limited current layperson’s knowledge, in terms of the big 5 I would probably increase Openness and Conscientiousness, leave Agreeableness and Extraversion at current rates, and decrease Neuroticism.
The question I’m trying to frame is, if you have the power to choose what preferences people would have, what would you choose? Obviously you’d increase Conscientiousness and decrease Neuroticism, because they generally determine how good you are at fulfilling your preferences, not what your preferences are. Increasing Openness would probably also be good because it would help prevent people from being jerks to those who are different, and I think that we would desire anyone we create to want to behave morally.
But what kind of preferences would you give people? Would you give them a diverse variety, or make them homogenous? Would you keep the current personality distribution the same or would you, for instance, make more nerds and less jocks? Would you pick one ideal person and make all the future generations of the world clones of them? You might say you need a variety of people for society to function, but would that mean that if we had an FAI to do all the work for us that we should make people more homogenous? If you created incredibly unambitious people who only preferred to exist and nothing else would you have created a utopia of 100% preference satisfaction?
I think I’ve figured out that we should create people whose preferences are at least as ambitious as a normal humans, boredom is good after all. And obviously we should create moral beings. And at the very least a good portion of the creatures we create should have fairly human-like emotions. We should definitely not create any sociopaths. I suspect that creating a wide variety of personality types is good, if only because novelty is good. But what is the proper mix of personalities? How many go-getters, how many artists, how many dreamers, how many down-to-earths, how many nerds, how many jocks, etc.
I suspect there is probably more than one right answer. And for now I’m trying to be content with that, because I’m beginning to think the anxiety it causes me might be symptomatic of some sort of serious mental health problem. I don’t think most of the people on this site get heartburn from thinking about this sort of stuff.