INS_ATGE@JHUVMS.BITNET (06/14/88)
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 88 16:07 EDT From: INS_ATGE%JHUVMS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Free Will vs. Society To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu X-Original-To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu, INS_ATGE I believe that as machines and human created creatures begin to pop up more and more in advanced jobs on our planet, we are going to have to re-evaluate our systems of blame and punishment. Some have said that the important parts of free will is making a choice between good and evil. Unfortunately, these concepts are rather ill-defined. I subscribe to the notion that there are not universal 'good' and 'evil' properties...I know that others definately disagree on this point. My defense rests in the possibility of other extremely different life systems, where perhaps things like murder and incest, and some of the other common things we humans refer to as 'evil' are necessary for that life form's survival. Even today, there are many who do not think murder is evil under cartain circumstances (captial punishment, war, perhaps abortion). I feel that we need to develop heuristics to deal with changing needs for our species, and needs with regard to interaction with non-human and/or non-carbon based life forms. Does determinism eradicate blame? Not neccessarily. Lets say system X caused unwanted harm to system Y. Even if system X had no other choice than to cause harm to Y due to its current input and current state, system X must still be "blamed" for the incident and hopefully system X can be "fixed" within acceptable guidelines. Do our current criminal punishments actually "fix" the erring systems? What are socially acceptable "fixes" (to many, captital punishment is not acceptable).? I am sure some may not like the idea of being "scientific" about punishment of erring systems. But I think the key word should be "fixes." Punishment by jailing may work on humans as a "fix", but not on an IBM PC. The IBM PC will undoubtably be fixed better by replacing bad chips on board. And this can be determined by comparison and research.
colin@CS.UCLA.EDU (Colin F. Allen) (06/17/88)
To: comp-ai-digest@seismo.CSS.GOV Path: ucla-cs!lanai!colin From: Colin F. Allen <colin@CS.UCLA.EDU> Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: Free Will vs. Society Date: Mon, 13 Jun 88 18:10 EDT References: <19880613194742.7.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU> Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU Reply-To: Colin F. Allen <lanai!colin@seismo.CSS.GOV> Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Lines: 13 In article <19880613194742.7.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU> INS_ATGE@JHUVMS.BITNET writes: >ill-defined. I subscribe to the notion that there are not universal >'good' and 'evil' properties...I know that others definately disagree on >this point. My defense rests in the possibility of other extremely >different life systems, where perhaps things like murder and incest, and >some of the other common things we humans refer to as 'evil' are necessary >for that life form's survival. But look, this is all rather naive.....you yourself are giving a criterion (survival value) for the acceptability of certain practices. So even if murder etc. are not universal evils, you do nonetheless believe that harming others without good cause is bad. So, after all, you do accept some general characterization of good and bad.