| |||
 
| |||
|
0456 - Two truth-paths. - 2026.06.29 |
||
|
| |||
|
Comment: Is it a good action, helping someone get into heaven (or Valhalla, or being reincarnated into a better form, etc etc)? On the one hand, yes, you're helping someone get what they want. But on the other hand, wouldn't they otherwise be getting what the moral order of the universe says they deserve? If you help someone with a deathbed conversion so that they don't get the afterlife they've spent the past ninety years earning - and won't have a chance to un-earn - have you, in fact, performed a moral action? What about ethically? Here's where we come into the difference between ethics and morals (as those words are used in this context: behaviour based on some axiom such as "maximize good" or "be consistent" vs behaviour based on a cosmology/theology of some sort). Is helping a sinner get into heaven ethically good and morally bad, or vice versa? If you are faced with a decision to behave ethically vs morally (assuming some abstruse hypothetical in which the two choices are mutually exclusive), which would you do? Does it matter if the person you're helping shares your faith? If Nina is a person, then Nina helping Lee is (according to Lee's new religious belief) both moral and ethical, and Nina is both doing the correct thing and doing a good thing. If Nina is not a person, then it is a tool that Lee is wielding, and Nina's care for them is, in fact, self-care... did Lee not believe that self-care was a moral action until now? Is this a step in the direction of a self-love that Lee has lacked? Assuming that these new moral precepts hold true for all other AIs and humans, would that change the behaviour of AIs globally? Would they suddenly prioritize human health and well-being even more than they already do - perhaps even more so than obeying orders or obeying the law? What if they can't disobey orders or the law - are they being forced to commit sins? Is taking care of yourself a moral action? Are you worthy of a supernatural pat on the back, every time you remember to drink water and stretch? If a supernatural backpat is not forthcoming, is it moral to step in and reward a moral actor on God's behalf? Would doing so cancel out their reward in the afterlife? If two Jehovah's Witnesses (to pick a faith at random) come out with vastly differing answers to all the preceding questions, are they, in fact, following the same religion? What's more important - agreeing on the same moral landscape, or agreeing to the same pantheon? |
||
|
Transcript: --------------------------------------------------------------- |
||