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[Dutchling]

Hmm... how much do you think a well-aged account would sell for?

at least twelve

[Bauglir]

Hmm... how much do you think a well-aged account would sell for?

at least twelve

Is that in dollars or bays?

[Frumple]

Imaginary kilobitcoins.

[Bauglir]

kilobitcoins.

Fuck the hell -

Imaginary

Oh.

[Truean]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103213.msg6286657#msg6286657

"Machines don't lie." Too many malfunctions have happened around me, so either machines are screwed up or I'm a malfunction magnet. Given the amount of metal attracted to my head, it's an equal chance of either. I absolutely will be a giant pain in the ass when ever anybody says it's a machine and therefore infallible. I've found a surprising number of errors that way.

Moreover the police officer example is not absurd. The police officer being human is a benefit. If we depart radically from my stated mantra of all humans are bastards, you want a person deciding. Yes there are racist fuckers hiding among the decent officers, but they're the exception rather than rule.

The only thing that kept America from absolutely disintegrating in the Kent State Riots is that National Guard troops DIDN'T pull the trigger.

Humans may sometimes have flawed morality, but machines have none.

That doesn't even get into tactical countermeasures like jamming, and altering code executable programming and recordings, which will be seen as word of god rather than questionable.

People want certainty. It. Doesn't. Exist. Machine or man, certainty is a myth. React how you want. I don't give a damn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mdIWaRi-7c\
That way the 1% could literally control the robot police.  No thank you.

Honestly. I just am tired. I don't care. If people want to believe that things are perfect and never lie one way or the other, then whatever.

I am tired of earth, these people.

They claim their labors are to build a heaven, yet their heaven is populated with horrors.

[SirQuiamus]

Imagine how much smoother decision making would become with the help of ethical calculus.

The concept of a universal ethical calculus is quite old and widely known, but somewhat problematic.

The main problem is that it doesn't work.

[Angle]

You could probably make one that would work relatively well so long as everyone had the same moral prepositions. It would probably be hella cumbersome and a pain to learn and use, though.

[Graknorke]

Machines really don't lie though. If they're not doing the thing they're meant to do then either:

• It is constructed wrong for its purpose
• It is being operated wrong (let's say that hackers fall into this category. It's not wrong from their perspective, but this is from the user's point of view)
• It is being used for the wrong thing

[Dutchling]

aka human failure

[Bauglir]

so long as everyone had the same moral prepositions

Yeah, this is a big sticking point, even once you suppose you devise a method for translating the meaning-free data from reality into something you can extract the salient moral points from (such a method surely exists, since humans do it constantly).

For example, you'd have a hell of a time selling me on the notion that pleasure is the chief good.

[Angle]

For example, you'd have a hell of a time selling me on the notion that pleasure is the chief good.

That's a moral preposition. It can't be sold. The best you can do is show how it is or isn't logically consistent with other moral prepositions, or how it would or wouldn't lead to the outcomes we want.

[Frumple]

... that's pretty obvious, though. There's very, very little things considered "good" (Frankly, I can't actually think of any off the top of my head -- anything that's immediately painful is intent to producing delayed pleasure of some sort, or mitigating a displeasure increase.) that aren't either about enabling pleasure or preventing pain (i.e. aiming to reduce displeasurable things).

Making decent lives for folks is pretty much as fundamental a good as it gets (at least if you're not doing weird metaphysical stuff, like parts of christian theology likes to do), so far as I'm aware, and you do that by making them not-miserable, otherwise known as having a minimum pleasure threshold in their general existence. It's not all straight physical pleasures and chemical highs -- even some of the oldest historical hedonists held that the greatest of pleasures was being among friends, iirc -- but... pleasure pretty much is the most fundamental of goods. The chief one. More or less everything is derivative of it, in one way or another.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, I don't think that's the case. A minimum threshold for not-miserable is important, obviously, and pleasure is certainly something it's important to make accessible to people, but I don't agree that it's the goal toward which we ought to be engineering society. Even if we're to assume it means something more broad than chemical highs and so you can't just shove everyone in a Perpetual Orgasm Box, I don't want to settle for mere contentment.

I see agency as being more important - the freedom to make choices, and choices that matter. Especially in the context of social engineering. I don't want a society that tells us to be happy, I want a society that tells us to choose our destiny and helps us make it happen. If you decide happiness is what you want out of life? That's great! Go for it, hedonism your heart out, but if I want to struggle toward some futile dream of mine, then maybe that's a poor decision, but it ought to be mine to make.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Dutchling]

It's not all straight physical pleasures and chemical highs -- even some of the oldest historical hedonists held that the greatest of pleasures was being among friends, iirc

The greatest pleasures are obviously chemical highs among friends.

not to be confused with high friends among chemicals

rip in rap