On this blog I am tracking a some of my struggles with questions that I'm not able to ignore and also not able to answer. I'm not active on social media, but...
There are interesting parallels between the Buddhist and the Stoic programs. Starting with a framework inspired by the Four Noble Truths: Both traditions agree that as an experiential matter life is suffering , we’re unhappy and we know it, or we think we’re happy but we’re mistaken, which is a form of suffering as well. The reason for suffering is that (a) we focus on the wrong things (aversion,…
Roles make moral obligations highly legible. Instead of having to subsume individual conduct under highly abstract principles (utilitarianism, contractualism), we analyze moral conflicts at the intermediate layer of abstraction of the various roles we find ourselves in: son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, nephew, colleague, friend, school teacher, cop, soldier, doctor, attorney,…
Traditional societies (real or imagined) have a problem with the individual. People are whatever their position happens to be in the societal orgchart. (Son, father, kinsman, vassal, liege, etc.) Strip away the positions and nothing is left. Such societies struggle to create a level of independence for the individual as a part within the whole. Modern societies (real or imagined) have a problem…
Most current thinking about AI regulation falls into two categories: Regulating humans who use AI. That makes sense. AIs are powerful and hard-to-control tools. AI use regulation is challenging in practice, some approaches are better than others, but not in theory. Regulating conscious AIs whose capabilities exceed those of humans in relevant domains ("AGI"). Here, the discussion revolves around…
There are many ways to map the terrain of ethical theories. One that I have found useful follows the kinds of questions we commonly ask when considering moral questions. "What should I do?" is a practical but not yet an ethical question because one can give a nakedly egoistic answer: "I will steal a car to get to my destination; I will do whatever it takes to get rich or to save the planet." "What…
In their excellent article The Discourse is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack , Joan Westenberg argues that online discourse is both broken and harmful because: It is a relentless parade of disconnected impressions (ICE! Cats! Greenland! Half Life 3!), exhausting the sustained attention required for rational thought It breaks up legitimate problems into bite sized skirmishes It selects for…