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Moral dilemna

Angra Mainyu said:
Speakpigeon said:
Yes.

Good point.

Still, I have to point out that "going public" isn't really essential here. The problem is I don't feel motivated by the idea of helping people who will inevitably turn the benefits brought to them into a hopeless mess of good and bad things, just like modern humanity is now.

Having said that, I'm interested. So, please, go on and explain your angle.
EB
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I'm afraid I don't have anything clever. I was just thinking that if you have the resources to do it but going public would make the results less good, then it seems like a no brainer, unless perhaps it has too high a cost for you?
That said, you say that people "will inevitably turn the benefits brought to them into a hopeless mess of good and bad things". That seems unclear to me. Are you saying that if you go ahead, the result will not actually be a significant improvement in the well-being of all human beings of the planet? If so, then it seems to me you do not have the resources to implement it, at least not successfully. But let's not get tangled in semantic quibbles. What I intended to ask is this:

Suppose you go ahead. Would things get better for all, or at least most (surely not all) human beings on the planet, without an undue burden on those who don't benefit?
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There's no way to tell. Given my pessimistic outlook, though, I have to be minded to assume it will be a mix bag of the very best and the very worst, somewhat like in the case of science, or even knowledge in general if we compare us humans to, say, apes or even turtles. In an ideal world, any new discovery should be used to ensure we all go forward and live better lives. In practice, of course, it's all a haphazard process and there's roadkill all over the place we don't even bother to inventory.

In our world, the problem isn't just the guy at the top and whether he's a dictator, it's all the little dictators below him, and not just those immediately below him because it's dictators all the way down.


So, here you are, I managed to draw this neat little parallel between turtles and dictators. :D



Angra Mainyu said:
Side note: I replied thinking this was an interesting thought experiment, not that you actually were claiming to have such method. Now I'm not so sure. Could you clarify that, please?
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OK, it's going to be disappointing for some but, no, no real discovery, just this one "interesting thought experiment". :(

To be honest, I don't think I would go bragging about a discovery on the Internet if I was rather minded to keep it secret and was worried about the FSB & CIA brotherhood.

Also, I'm not so pessimistic about people. Rather, I assumed the outlook that unfortunately I think most people have, at least judging by how they respond to each others' posts on forums... :glare:

Some people did try to answer the OP, though. Good on one level but but not so good on the other.

Others didn't even try. So, basically, those just tried to get the best outcome for them (I should go public so they would benefit) without even contributing to the result (provide a rational argument why I should go public). This is the kind of attitude that really gives a bad name to humanity.

For those people who did try to answer the OP, it's not so good on at least one level because they didn't even try to argue that humanity was better than what I pretended my pessimistic outlook made it out to be. Which suggests you all agree humanity doesn't look good on the face of it.

Still, not all is lost, and if I indeed ever made an interesting discovery, I'll make sure you all know about it. :p
EB
 
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