Saturday, January 17, 2004
What would an immortal drive? The volokh conspirators have been discussing the following scenario: Driving entails risk. What if technology creates immortality, but does not create safer driving? The foreseeable risk that driving, sooner or later, will result in pedestrian fatality approaches certainty.
Does that make the driver a murderer?
My response: What's under discussion is how ethical systems need to respond to advancing lifespans.
Minor quibble: the driver is at most a manslaughterer - the accident, while foreseeable, is not immanently intentional. It is foreseeable that there will be some accident someday, but no plan to have this particular accident.
The hypo is a subset of the question about risk-aversity over time, where the timeframe is extended.
One observation: by extending the time frame, more situations can be characterized as a reiterated prisoner's dilemma. See Axelrod's seminal article on the evolution of cooperation.
Another: Ethics are survival strategies. Nothing more, nothing less.
A strategy that works in the short term may not work in the long term.
Past performance does not guarantee future results.
We live in a deathist culture which has not adjusted to the very real chance that those now living may live for hundreds of years.
My parents were methodists, following an ethic invented in the 1600s when lifespan averaged 40 years.
A few forward thinkers have adopted ethics that fit better in yesterday's world of 80 year lifespans. This is still far too short-sighted.
The singularity approaches. 2012, 2040, whenever, it is still within the lifespan of most of us.
Driving, along with smoking, swimming, and drunken swimming, is high risk.
The prospects of nuclear catastrophe seem more remote than they did in the 60s.
I want to live forever, via techniques such as AI and cloning.
I'm an extropian transhumanist.
I currently engage in risky behaviors:
I live in a city, smoke dope, ride my bike in traffic.
I've run over a pedestrian - a baby raccoon. I have guilt and angst over that.
Please join me in contributing to PETA and ALF.
I've totaled my car. I've fallen off my bike, waking up in the hospital.
My pal johnny was 25 when he died of lung cancer.
My circle of friends are in their early 20s and all smoke - I hate their deathism.
War, of the iraq variety, is deathist. Millions of arab and persian kids will grow up wanting revenge on bush. Personal wmd get cheaper every year.
Bush is very pro-deathist, as shown by his opposition to cloning research.
I tend to think that Libertarianism is a post-deathist ethic - live and let live.
I could be wrong, but it's no coincidence that extropians embrace anarcho-capitalism, and see democracy as ludicrously outmoded as belief in a divine right of kings.
It is frustrating for me as an extropian to live in a deathist culture.
I drive now and then, but I'm less plugged into the automotive culture, and tend to telecommute.
I recently relocated further out in the country because of immediate death risks at my home/office in the hood. I try to manage risk. I've had a bit of unsafe sex, been tested, try to remember to avoid such behaviors.
I have to make tradeoffs between my long term goals, which include getting off the planet, and the ever-present question of what shall i do today.
Staying home is not optimum. Most accidents happen at home in the kitchen.
You are greater risk from your spouse than from anyone else.
I've made a few of the points I wanted to make, although I sense I'm rambling a bit. I'm going to go take a bath. I hope I don't drown. Tonight I will drive back to my house and do illegal dangerous drugs with illegal dangerous people, because otherwise the loneliness and resulting depression could kill me. Life entails risk.
Long life requires managing that risk.
These days, I am somewhat optimistic that I will live to see the singularity and have access to life extension and intellegence enhancement. This has been the wave i've been riding since 1969: right now things are bad, but hold on, because it's getting better. On the other hand, recently a guy had a gun to my head, saying he was going to kill me, and I had a chance to think about my life so far, and I'm pleased. It's been a good ride, and if I have to get off at the next stop, that's ok.
Does that make the driver a murderer?
My response: What's under discussion is how ethical systems need to respond to advancing lifespans.
Minor quibble: the driver is at most a manslaughterer - the accident, while foreseeable, is not immanently intentional. It is foreseeable that there will be some accident someday, but no plan to have this particular accident.
The hypo is a subset of the question about risk-aversity over time, where the timeframe is extended.
One observation: by extending the time frame, more situations can be characterized as a reiterated prisoner's dilemma. See Axelrod's seminal article on the evolution of cooperation.
Another: Ethics are survival strategies. Nothing more, nothing less.
A strategy that works in the short term may not work in the long term.
Past performance does not guarantee future results.
We live in a deathist culture which has not adjusted to the very real chance that those now living may live for hundreds of years.
My parents were methodists, following an ethic invented in the 1600s when lifespan averaged 40 years.
A few forward thinkers have adopted ethics that fit better in yesterday's world of 80 year lifespans. This is still far too short-sighted.
The singularity approaches. 2012, 2040, whenever, it is still within the lifespan of most of us.
Driving, along with smoking, swimming, and drunken swimming, is high risk.
The prospects of nuclear catastrophe seem more remote than they did in the 60s.
I want to live forever, via techniques such as AI and cloning.
I'm an extropian transhumanist.
I currently engage in risky behaviors:
I live in a city, smoke dope, ride my bike in traffic.
I've run over a pedestrian - a baby raccoon. I have guilt and angst over that.
Please join me in contributing to PETA and ALF.
I've totaled my car. I've fallen off my bike, waking up in the hospital.
My pal johnny was 25 when he died of lung cancer.
My circle of friends are in their early 20s and all smoke - I hate their deathism.
War, of the iraq variety, is deathist. Millions of arab and persian kids will grow up wanting revenge on bush. Personal wmd get cheaper every year.
Bush is very pro-deathist, as shown by his opposition to cloning research.
I tend to think that Libertarianism is a post-deathist ethic - live and let live.
I could be wrong, but it's no coincidence that extropians embrace anarcho-capitalism, and see democracy as ludicrously outmoded as belief in a divine right of kings.
It is frustrating for me as an extropian to live in a deathist culture.
I drive now and then, but I'm less plugged into the automotive culture, and tend to telecommute.
I recently relocated further out in the country because of immediate death risks at my home/office in the hood. I try to manage risk. I've had a bit of unsafe sex, been tested, try to remember to avoid such behaviors.
I have to make tradeoffs between my long term goals, which include getting off the planet, and the ever-present question of what shall i do today.
Staying home is not optimum. Most accidents happen at home in the kitchen.
You are greater risk from your spouse than from anyone else.
I've made a few of the points I wanted to make, although I sense I'm rambling a bit. I'm going to go take a bath. I hope I don't drown. Tonight I will drive back to my house and do illegal dangerous drugs with illegal dangerous people, because otherwise the loneliness and resulting depression could kill me. Life entails risk.
Long life requires managing that risk.
These days, I am somewhat optimistic that I will live to see the singularity and have access to life extension and intellegence enhancement. This has been the wave i've been riding since 1969: right now things are bad, but hold on, because it's getting better. On the other hand, recently a guy had a gun to my head, saying he was going to kill me, and I had a chance to think about my life so far, and I'm pleased. It's been a good ride, and if I have to get off at the next stop, that's ok.
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