This reminds me of a thought I had recently—whether or not God exists, God is coming—as long as humans continue to make technological progress. Although we may regret it (for one, brief instant) when he gets here. Of course, our God will be bound by the laws of the universe, unlike the Theist God.
The Christian God is an interesting God. He’s something of a utilitarian. He values joy and created humans in a joyful state. But he values freedom over joy. He wanted humans to be like himself, living in joy but having free will. Joy is beautiful to him, but it is meaningless if his creations don’t have the ability to choose not-joy. When his creations did choose not-joy, he was sad but he knew it was a possibility. So he gave them help to make it easier to get back to joy.
I know that LW is sensitive to extended religious reference. Please forgive me for skipping the step of translating interesting moral insights from theology into non-religious speak.
I do hope that the beings we make which are orders of magnitude more powerful than us have some sort of complex value system, and not anything as simple as naive algebraic utilitarianism. If they value freedom first, then joy, then they will not enslave us to the joy machines—unless we choose it.
(Side note: this post is tagged with “shut-up-and-multiply”. That phrase trips the warning signs for me of a fake utility function, as it always seems to be followed by some naive algebraic utilitarian assertion that makes ethics sound like a solved problem).
edit: Whoa, my expression of my emotional distaste for “shut up and multiply” seems to be attracting down-votes. I’ll take it out.
This reminds me of a thought I had recently—whether or not God exists, God is coming—as long as humans continue to make technological progress. Although we may regret it (for one, brief instant) when he gets here. Of course, our God will be bound by the laws of the universe, unlike the Theist God.
The Christian God is an interesting God. He’s something of a utilitarian. He values joy and created humans in a joyful state. But he values freedom over joy. He wanted humans to be like himself, living in joy but having free will. Joy is beautiful to him, but it is meaningless if his creations don’t have the ability to choose not-joy. When his creations did choose not-joy, he was sad but he knew it was a possibility. So he gave them help to make it easier to get back to joy.
I know that LW is sensitive to extended religious reference. Please forgive me for skipping the step of translating interesting moral insights from theology into non-religious speak.
I do hope that the beings we make which are orders of magnitude more powerful than us have some sort of complex value system, and not anything as simple as naive algebraic utilitarianism. If they value freedom first, then joy, then they will not enslave us to the joy machines—unless we choose it.
(Side note: this post is tagged with “shut-up-and-multiply”. That phrase trips the warning signs for me of a fake utility function, as it always seems to be followed by some naive algebraic utilitarian assertion that makes ethics sound like a solved problem).
edit: Whoa, my expression of my emotional distaste for “shut up and multiply” seems to be attracting down-votes. I’ll take it out.