playing God

[revots33]

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It's clear that they don't have any way of knowing the programmer, unless you intervene to cause them to. But I take it you're good with anything that doesn't involve eternal torture?

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No, I think even temporary torture (for ex. an African person starving to death) is wrong, if you could just write a couple lines of code and feed him.

[Metric]

So at what point in the evolutionary development of this computer intelligence do you begin to feel that the only moral thing to do is to actively prevent all suffering?

[Matt R.]

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It's clear that they don't have any way of knowing the programmer, unless you intervene to cause them to. But I take it you're good with anything that doesn't involve eternal torture?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I think even temporary torture (for ex. an African person starving to death) is wrong, if you could just write a couple lines of code and feed him.

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In such a program, where everything is given to these algorithmically evolved sentient beings and they do not experience pain, would they be able to experience pleasure? Would they even be able to understand what happiness is, if they never experience any sort of discomfort? Would they appreciate their world? Why or why not?

[madnak]

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Would you do that because you think anything less is unethical, or just because you're a good guy and the poor bastards love you so much?

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Out of a sense of obligation, so I suppose the former.

[madnak]

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In such a program, where everything is given to these algorithmically evolved sentient beings and they do not experience pain, would they be able to experience pleasure? Would they even be able to understand what happiness is, if they never experience any sort of discomfort? Would they appreciate their world? Why or why not?

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That's a lot of different questions. Would they be able to experience pleasure? Of course. There's absolutely no valid reason to consider pleasure as contigent on pain. We don't even experience the two in the same way neurologically (in general). And there have been plenty of people who've experience extreme pain, but never extreme pleasure, or vice versa.

Would they understand happiness? Probably not to the extent that we do - how does it go? "If you have experienced hunger, you know that having food is a miracle. If you have suffered from the cold, you know the preciousness of warmth."

But in terms of appreciating the world, I think they definitely would. For the people (and cultures) who genuinely have it good, thankfulness for life is a common theme. Of course, you see the same thing in people who have suffered and then seen an end to that suffering, it's hard to say which is stronger.

[Metric]

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[ QUOTE ]
In such a program, where everything is given to these algorithmically evolved sentient beings and they do not experience pain, would they be able to experience pleasure? Would they even be able to understand what happiness is, if they never experience any sort of discomfort? Would they appreciate their world? Why or why not?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a lot of different questions. Would they be able to experience pleasure? Of course. There's absolutely no valid reason to consider pleasure as contigent on pain. We don't even experience the two in the same way neurologically (in general). And there have been plenty of people who've experience extreme pain, but never extreme pleasure, or vice versa.

Would they understand happiness? Probably not to the extent that we do - how does it go? "If you have experienced hunger, you know that having food is a miracle. If you have suffered from the cold, you know the preciousness of warmth."

But in terms of appreciating the world, I think they definitely would. For the people (and cultures) who genuinely have it good, thankfulness for life is a common theme. Of course, you see the same thing in people who have suffered and then seen an end to that suffering, it's hard to say which is stronger.

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I certainly don't dismiss this point of view, but pain/suffering is really the body's way of saying "the situation isn't ideal -- please change something." It seems to me that making "universal provision" for any particular set of needs is likely to result in a new path of evolution in which other sets of wants/needs become the focus of competition and by extension suffering when those wants/needs are not met.

[madnak]

I think that's valid, but you are forgetting a minor detail known as God.

[Matt R.]

Keep in mind, we are writing code that removes any and all "temporary torture", as revots put it. So we are talking about extremes.

Obviously torture is caused by pain in some form. If we are removing all pain, thereby removing all forms of temporary torture, what would our sentient programs derive pleasure from? As an example, one way people in our world tend to experience pleasure or happiness is through working hard to achieve something difficult. If you never experienced pain anywhere along the way, then it would be easy. If it was easy, then no hard work was involved along the way. It would be about as difficult as me opening a door. I certainly derive more pleasure from say, learning a difficult subject thoroughly than I do opening a door. This is because it was difficult along the way, there were certainly moments of frustration (a form of psychological pain), and when it actually clicks in my mind I experience a form of pleasure. Removing any sort of pain (and thereby any sort of difficulty in doing something) would certainly seem to remove any sort of pleasure derived from the experience. Would the experiences of our sentient beings in the program be different in some way if I wrote code which prevented them from experiencing any sort of temporary pain or torture?

I also agree that they definitely would not understand happiness in the way we do. Does understanding the experience of happiness pose no inherent value for the sentient programs? Why or why not?

Also, why would they appreciate the world? Have you ever seen that show on MTV... "my sweet 16" (not sure if this is the exact title). It is the one where the extremely wealthy families throw birthday parties for the rich and spoiled daughters. I believe one girl got extremely angry and whiney because she did not receive her new BMW or Mercedez in the proper color. Do you think giving this girl everything she wanted made her appreciate the world more, less, or the same? Do you think it would be the same or different for our sentient beings in the program?

[Metric]

It seems like we're creating a situation where it's immoral to run a sufficiently advanced "evolution sim" unless you the programmer are prepared to spend all of your time making sure that every new demand by every individual is met. I guess there's no reason this has to be wrong a priori, but it seems a bit unreasonable to me -- but maybe that's because my intuition is based on a world where competition (and thus, suffering) are the norm.

[Matt R.]

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I think that's valid, but you are forgetting a minor detail known as God.

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I think Metric's point is totally valid. In our example, we ARE God for our program. In our program, the pain mechanism evolved to help the sentient beings cope with the world. If we actively removed it through coding, thereby removing all forms of temporary torture and pain, what do you think would happen to the beings in our program? How would they know if something is bad or not?