Numeric system to determine morality?
Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 9:40 pm
I've recently seen a video (can't manage to find it), where a scientist explained how we're going to able to 'project our minds' on computers.
In the future, we're going to able to see on a screen how our toughts are represented in our mind, and with how much intensity.
And at a certain point he said that with that method we could see what's 'wrong' and what's 'right'.
This really interested me.
So I wondered: what if we could create a numeric system to determine morality?
Example:
Let's take one isolated person. This ideal person doesn't do any harm whatsoever; if we give that person the value of 1, then 2 people that don't do harm have the value of 2.
We could probably find a way to give everything a numeric value. The amount of value could be based on:
-sentient/not
-amount of cognitive capabilities (altough we still need to determine such things)
-harming/not/having the intention to harm (amount of things/beings it/he/she harms, how much harm)
-amount of life remaining (if we could know)
-amount of sentient beings that are affected to it/him/her and how much, and how much damage/positivity would that thing/being do to the environment if dead/alive; basically the impact on the world
The problem is which value to attribute to each one of those qualities. Probably in the future we will have a way to? If we're going to be able to see what our brain thinks about it and with how much intensity, and make an average among different people, we'll probably be able to assign to those points a certain determinated value.
If humans' opinions/toughts were to be too heterogeneous, and/or also affected too much by evolution/personal experiences, then what if we could make a robot to do this kind of job? There are already sentient robots, a future technology would probably be able to.
Could this be the resolution to moral dilemmas?
In the future, we're going to able to see on a screen how our toughts are represented in our mind, and with how much intensity.
And at a certain point he said that with that method we could see what's 'wrong' and what's 'right'.
This really interested me.
So I wondered: what if we could create a numeric system to determine morality?
Example:
Let's take one isolated person. This ideal person doesn't do any harm whatsoever; if we give that person the value of 1, then 2 people that don't do harm have the value of 2.
We could probably find a way to give everything a numeric value. The amount of value could be based on:
-sentient/not
-amount of cognitive capabilities (altough we still need to determine such things)
-harming/not/having the intention to harm (amount of things/beings it/he/she harms, how much harm)
-amount of life remaining (if we could know)
-amount of sentient beings that are affected to it/him/her and how much, and how much damage/positivity would that thing/being do to the environment if dead/alive; basically the impact on the world
The problem is which value to attribute to each one of those qualities. Probably in the future we will have a way to? If we're going to be able to see what our brain thinks about it and with how much intensity, and make an average among different people, we'll probably be able to assign to those points a certain determinated value.
If humans' opinions/toughts were to be too heterogeneous, and/or also affected too much by evolution/personal experiences, then what if we could make a robot to do this kind of job? There are already sentient robots, a future technology would probably be able to.
Could this be the resolution to moral dilemmas?