govt that can further martian sucess

clark · 2004-01-22 15:16:06

People in society need to have basic rules to get along.

You mean law? Let me look around, yup, we got some.

You cannot have some people deciding, for example, that child molestation is ok, if the child does not complain. This is the view of NAMBLA and the Am. Pediatric Assoc.

You're being silly. What's your point? I think everyone should listen to me and do as i say. So what? Lots of people see the world differently. So, I ask you, what's the law related to this issue? Uh-huh, last time I checked, molestation of a child is a serious criminal offense. Now some may question why it is such a henious crime. Afterall, putting your hands on a 17 year old in America is ostenibly child molestation, yet the same child in Britian is considered an adult.

Of course that's really not what you're talking about, you're talking about the 8 year old variety of molestation, right? Okay, so without drawing in your sanctimonious 'morality', can you defend the law that holds child molestation as wrong?

I can. You see, a child is not an adult, therefore a child is unable to provide legitimate consent regarding the 'touching' of their person. This has nothing to do with morality, and you drawing the issue into the conversation only makes you look silly.

Now, our social contract says that we dont hurt kids.

Our social contract says we can have differing points of view.

This is based on morality.

No, it's based on f-cking common sense. You prove the point perfectly- it's common sense not to hurt one another cause when ya do then some angry person is gunna come hunt ya down if ya mess with the wrong baby cub.

People in confined spaces need to have a mutually acceptable moral contract, and you cannot have one with people who dont understand what morality is.

Okay Mars-o-naut, what is morality?

PS Touch my kid and I will kill you, and I will kill anyone who defends you.

Greetings to you too! :laugh:

So you either import nothing but child molesters, or you make darn sure you only import folks who have a solid moral basis for living.

Amazing how you can divide the world into two completely seperate groups, the good people, and then the child molestors. If I aint a good person then must be... please tell me you don't actually see the world like this.

Oh yes, you did nothing to refute my argument RE slaves.

I didn't realize I needed to refute it. It sounded like I was agreeing with your analysis. Hmmm, perhaps we have a failure to communicate.

You're right, slaves got social benefits and the net economic benefit of having slaves was 'not that great' compared to the ordinary workforce. It must be true if you studied it in a course on US economic history. It just has to be.

Martinkh · 2004-01-22 16:24:29

Law and morality are two different things. The law once said slavery was ok. Does that mean it was ok? The law in Islamic countries say if a woman claims rape and there are not 4 male muslim witnesses, it is not rape, but adultry on her part, and she should be killed. Are you willing to say that is OK, that our social contract allow such disparate points of view to exist beside standard judeo-christian based morality? Would you put such people on a ship with your family, and cave in to the argument that thier values mean as much as yours, even when it hurts you? extreme examples true, but if your arguments fail at these extremes, then when can they hold true?

Such a social contract cannot survive, and you are witnessing the results in Europe as we speak. I know you love your religion of diversity and tolorance to the exclusion of all else, thus your faith (liberalism is a faith, in practice) cannot be shaken by mere logic and fact.

I am not a religious man, but sadly too many people just cannot comprehend morality, and the need for it.

clark · 2004-01-22 16:39:11

Law and morality are two different things. The law once said slavery was ok. Does that mean it was ok?

Law is derived from the aggregate view of individual morality. They are in essence the very same thing. The only difference is ostenibly that the morality you refrence is derived from some god and our belief in what we thin it wants. Law is derived from, by man, so we can not kill one another.

The law justified slavery from the morality of the times, which were supported by interpretations of religious documents. According to the bible, it's sometimes okay to kill your children (speaking of children), at least if God commands it. :laugh:

So let me ask you this, on what basis do you claim that your view of morality is correct? Where do you derive your perceived superiority of belief?

The law in Islamic countries say if a woman claims rape and there are not 4 male muslim witnesses, it is not rape, but adultry on her part, and she should be killed.

Not all laws are just. The law in Islamic countries that base their law off of radical interpretations of religious texts are not just. The same can be said if the Chrisitian Fundamentalists had their way with US law.

It's against the law in many states to perform certain sexual acts in the privacy of your own home with another consenting adult. Anti-sodomy laws were derived from Juedo-Christian morality. Is that right?

OK, that our social contract allow such disparate points of view to exist beside standard judeo-christian based morality?

Standard for you! You're the one coming off as intolerant of another belief, and you do so by acting as the 'other'. You're being consumed by what you despise. Ironic, no? :laugh:
Disparate views are acceptable as long as they accept my individual right to disagree with them, and not limit my individual choices that do no harm to another. Judeo-chrisitan morality can be just as bad as any other morality you care to point out.

Would you put such people on a ship with your family, and cave in to the argument that thier values mean as much as yours, even when it hurts you? extreme examples true, but if your arguments fail at these extremes, then when can they hold true?

I have yet to see a legitimate argument come from you in this regard.

Such a social contract cannot survive, and you are witnessing the results in Europe as we speak.

You mean the EU? The strengthing Euro? The counterweight to US dominance? What exactly are we witnessing in Europe?

I know you love your religion of diversity and tolorance to the exclusion of all else, thus your faith (liberalism is a faith, in practice) cannot be shaken by mere logic and fact.

Bleh. You don't know anything. Ask around, I love nothing.

I am not a religious man, but sadly too many people just cannot comprehend morality, and the need for it.

So if you're not a religious man, where does your morality come from?

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-22 16:57:45

If we purposely make weak AI's, yet develop the capability to develop strong AI's but prefer not to in order to avoid these squishy issues, isn't there at least a basis for a comparison to forciably engineering people's intelligence to make them suited for their designated task?

Who says we're doing it specifically to avoid squishy issues? There are obviously benefits, but that's not the primary reason. Again, the primary reason is because it's easier, and that strong AI is strictly unnecessary and basically inefficient. Look at looms, they specifically replace humans at sewing. Do we now need to make them highly intelligent so that they are conscious? You cannot be seriously arguing that this is remotely rational. It's akin to saying that humans ought to be born with specialized tasks; now that is slavery, being born to do something.

There is no comparasion between human intelligence and weak machine intelligence because as tools they are still used by humans directly, they are in fact useless without us. A strong AI can exist independent of us, and does not need us to be its 'brain.'

You note the Uplift series and find fault with granting intelligence and souls to the lesser beings, they in effect become useless tools who can no longer be exploited to something resembling us.

They're not lesser beings, they're just tied to a body, kinda like the intelligent loom I was talking about. Fortunately they are able to join up with minds and "become" human or whatever they want, but you're not going to have that with our loom, and its life could be quite miserable indeed.

What is this with acting like it's a tools right to resemble us?

We can't learn from a tool, we can learn from our equals. And if it is within our power, are we not somehow obligated to act?

I would say that's crazy talk. Just because we can learn from our equals does not make it necessary for us to indow every useful thing with soulful intelligence. Are you seriously saying that it is necessary to add souls to lamps, telephones, chairs, desks, cups? C'mon clark. All those things would not only be inefficient (it requires energy to power a soul), but I would suspect that being so unlike us physically they would be miserable in their state.

The thing here is that once we do have strong AI, that strong AI will likely use "tools" itself. Want to monitor the temperatures of all the rooms in a building? Don't have to consciously do it, just design a neural net that alerts when certain room temperatures go beyond their set level. Of course, you would argue that that strong AI is now 'obligated' to make the thermostat have a soul...

Oh Helena... don't know what I'm going to do with you.

Oh, and BTW, you said that the future of technology is to move away from human-like intelligence essentially; I find that hard to concieve. Most AI research is in fact going in the direction of making things more human-like. It's profitable to have human robot slaves, it's not profitable to give everyone self-replicating tools. It'll be interesting in the future to see us manipulating strong AI to be basically whatever we want it to be; then we might have that living talking teacup like Alice in Wonderland; and it would be happy in its state because we told it to be at a lower level. Talk about ethical issues...

Martinkh · 2004-01-22 18:28:30

The EU is having a rise in anti-semetic attacks, France is about to have full scale muslim riots, and they just gave up on the latest attempt at a constitution. France and Germany are telling jews to stop wearing yarmalukes due to anti-semetic violence, while the French govt sits on a report showing young muslims are responsible for the violence. France, Germany and Italy have deficits too high per the EU charter, but hey, they don't care. Oh yeah, their productivity is falling further behind us as their unemployment rises and their grannies die in social-utopia nursing homes when the temperature touches 90 deg.

Some counterweight.

But I'm done with this thread. There is an adage that applies:
"arguing on the internet is like the special olympics, even if you win, you are still retarded"

clark · 2004-01-23 12:30:06

Martinkh writes:

But I'm done with this thread. There is an adage that applies:
"arguing on the internet is like the special olympics, even if you win, you are still retarded"

I think this tells us everything we need to know about you, and your views. I hope you find the peace you seem so desperatley to seek. Take care.

Josh,

I guess what I'm getting at in a round a bout way is the value of the human 'soul', that free will thing that gives us a choice, whatever you want to call it.

A dog can be nothing more than a dog. It can't choose to be a cat, a fish, or a bird. It can't do anything other than what it is to be a dog. A wrench is nothing more than a wrench, a tool. It has no choice. But a human, ah, now somehow with this gift or accident of intellect, we have choice. We can choose to act in negative ways, or positive ways, or not at all. Right? We can nitpick on whether or not we really do have any choices, if it's all just imagined so we can cope with our environment, but we'll never have an answer.

So, if we value, or if can value this thing that allows us this choice, do we not dimisih it's value by not sharing it? Look at our basic principles of progress- to provide more choices, more opportunity for the individuals of our groups. To give them choices upon which to apply their will.

Now we could engineer our tools to be satisifed with their state, and of course it would behoove us, and ultimetly the tools to do so. Yet we haven't been confronted with the actual decision yet upon where we can decide, to choose, to give our tools the very same opportunity that nature has led us to.

In essence this was just a little thought experiement. So I can't say I disagree with you or your conclusions.

A.J.Armitage · 2004-01-23 23:35:56

clark

It used to be moral to own slaves. It used to be moral to beat your wife. It used to be moral to lynch the black man. It used to be moral to stop 'lesser' humans from reproducing.

I suspect you mean all that literally. That those who lynched blacks ect. did nothing wrong.

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-24 00:30:28

Nah... he's saying that those people back in that day didn't see anything wrong with it. Just because they didn't see their failures does not mean that they were right.

Palomar · 2004-01-24 07:56:37

*Blanket statements are absurd.

In the days of black slavery there were white people who were opposed to the slave trade, believed it to be immoral, and worked to stop it (as early as the mid-17th century [1600's], if not even earlier than that). There were abolition of slavery societies formed by whites in the U.S. Colonies and in Europe. And do the words "Underground Railroad" ring any bells?

As for wife beating, there have always been women and men who have voiced opposition to domestic abuse/violence, have sought to assist victims of it, addressed the issue (attempts at education), etc.

There will always be at least 1 voice of dissent, which means there has never been absolute consensus thinking about what is or is not moral. Thus, making blanket statements about morality is silly.

--Cindy

Aetius · 2004-01-24 19:45:15

The ancient Greek playwright Euripides, who was a veteran of the Battle of Marathon (if I'm not mistaken), wrote many plays which condemned both jingoistic militarism and the institution of slavery. He was also a firm believer in womens' rights.

Euripides had an almost 20th-century view of society, but his attempts to create social change through his plays fell mostly on deaf ears.

Gennaro · 2004-01-24 22:37:10

"People in society need to have basic rules to get along."
"-You mean law? Let me look around, yup, we got some."
"You cannot have some people deciding, for example, that child molestation is ok, if the child does not complain. This is the view of NAMBLA and the Am. Pediatric Assoc."
"-You're being silly. What's your point? I think everyone should listen to me and do as i say. So what? Lots of people see the world differently. So, I ask you, what's the law related to this issue? Uh-huh, last time I checked, molestation of a child is a serious criminal offense. Now some may question why it is such a henious crime. Afterall, putting your hands on a 17 year old in America is ostenibly child molestation, yet the same child in Britian is considered an adult."

Law is derived from the collective consciousness of a given society. This in turn is a product of the dominating sense of individual empathy and compassion, in other words emotions. Emotions are for real and when shared by a majority provides the foundations of law. Nothing else.
Potential child molestors will have to abide by the rules of the collective moral consciousness or suffer the consequences.
There is no universal morality.

quasar777 · 2004-03-16 13:38:22

this will be the most important issue in any mars colony;law.

dicktice · 2004-03-17 10:05:55

Marthinkh: That's right: Start a topic, and have your little fun until things get a little tough to take, and then just walk away. Smacks of moral cowardice to me.
Re. Tools and/or machines as slaves--As soon as consciousneess can be instilled in such, they're going to know boredom, and then watchout!

Socrates · 2004-09-01 19:08:06

Conservatives and Libertarians on Mars? Listen Martinkh, you are a meathead. Allowing the members of the political spectrum that spawned Hitler (Conservatives) and fascist anarchists (Libertarians) to be the majority of the settlers on Mars, may create a succesful Martian colony, but its also a good way to revive witch burnings and get a society that mistrusts it's own government. Yes some people like that will be among the first colonists (After all the Pilgrims were conservative even for their time) but the rest will be either from pluralistic religious groups that are persecuted (i.e. The Wiccans) and from people paid to be hard labor for corporations so they can make the sponsoring company profit (perhaps sponsered by a mining company) because those were the people who settled America.

Besides there was this one Quaker (a very liberal religion in those days, and for the most part today) named William Penn who founded a very successful colony (I'll let you discover what the colony was called) based on brotherly love (hippie principals). In other words Mars will probably be founded by the same kinds of people. People either a) Persecuted on Earth so they emigrate to Mars or b) Sponsored by Corporations in order to tap into whatever resources Mars has to offer.

No, the government that controls Mars won't be able to help Mars much when it's a year-and-a-half away but it won't really matter much, just like in America.

In short it will take all sorts to colonize Mars, left wing and right wing and totally indifferent alike.

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Re: govt that can further martian sucess

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Re: govt that can further martian sucess

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#30 2004-01-22 18:28:30

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#31 2004-01-23 12:30:06

Re: govt that can further martian sucess

#32 2004-01-23 23:35:56

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#33 2004-01-24 00:30:28

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#34 2004-01-24 07:56:37

Re: govt that can further martian sucess

#35 2004-01-24 19:45:15

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#37 2004-03-16 13:38:22

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