kajarainbow | Freedom of will versus the prevention of atrocities

Well the trick is, who decides what "better off" means? Everyone has different values, different ideas of 'right' and 'wrong'. None of them are universal. To say that you have the right to make people unable to war and torture, means that someone else has the right to make you a godfearing christian; their view of 'better'.

That said, if you had the power to change the world and didn't use it, eventually someone else would, for their own nefarious purposes.

Here's an interesting thought, though. What if the power to alter human conciousness was given to a democratic body, like the Canadian government, and they voted on what to change. Would that then be good, being the gestalt values of a people?

Good questions. This is the kind of discussion I wanted. I think that ultimately if it was down to me, I wouldn't choose to remake humanity into an ideal. I'd eliminate the worst violence/torture tendencies, put in a guard against doing further meddling, and leave it at that.

I wouldn't trust a democratic body to meddle with my consciousness. Hmm. How many people would've voted to eliminate queer, trans, atheist, etc. people by making them not those things?

Well, you might know that we have gay marriage in Canada. It was decided by the courts, not parliament. Parliament decided to have a vote on if they should clarify the laws so that gay folks can't wed. Out of 300+ people on the Canadian Parliament, over 100 voted to oppress the gays. But not enough to overturn the law.

(On the other hand those bone-heads passed a law that forces blank media manufacturers to pay a levy to the copyright board since blank CDs are only used for storing pirated music. >.< )

How about this; should a person be able to do it to themself? Should a person be able to do it to their children? Should a person be able to do it to their legal dependants? What about if it's only used on prisoners or people who break the law? What about if it's only temporary, or restricted to an area, like pacification gas or an obedience field?

What if it's voulentary but 'reccomended' and people pressure you into it by exclusion?

The question, of course, really comes down to what "making people nice" means, as Relee said above. The problem being, no single individual is capable of knowing what's "nicer" for an entire planet of people, nor do they really, deep down, give a shit. Why does anyone want to change the world? To make people better off, okay, that's part of it. But why do they want that? Why do other people matter to them?

Because suffering makes them uncomfortable. Even if it's not happening to them, knowing it exists, having to see it in the media and all around them, it makes them afraid. Afraid it's going to happen to them. People want this sort of thing, this sort of "make people nicer" dream, because, ultimately, they don't want to see that suffering happen to them. At it's core, all love and all compassion is selfish. That's not a bad thing, normally: if we didn't have some self-interest, nobody would do anything.

But let's say you DO have the power to "smooth people out," as it were, to make all the unsightly, unpleasant bumps in personality go away. Would you, honestly now, actually take the time to sort through every individual mind on the entire planet and meticulously provide the right deep-level therapy so that they're completely functional and nonthreatening human beings? Because omnipotent or not, you can't just wave a hand and "fix" people, and that's even presuming they WANT to be fixed.

So would you make that much effort on your part? Probably not. Probably what would happen is you'd eventually get tired or bored of the effort and just make everyone think like you, just like anybody else would in that position, because you and pretty much anyone else would want things to be fixed fast. If it was me, I'd probably do it that way too. I can say I wouldn't, oh that's horrible, but power corrupts, and if you hold absolute power over the minds of every living being, nobody would be capable of resisting the temptation to abuse it. Even if someone DOES make all the effort to do it the hard way, do you honestly expect them to relinquish that power over people? The longer they hold it, the more likely they'll abuse it, and by our species' own nature, no human would ever give it up.

And let's say it happens anyway. An entire planet, completely unified in thought and deed. Six billion people, all thinking exactly the same. What happens, then, if we run into aliens? Or a new form of life arises on the planet? What if it wasn't you who brought the change, but someone who thinks we should be the only dominant lifeform? Imagine an entire world of manic, genocidal xenophobes who never have doubts. That scares me far more than our current cultural situation.

The only safe option is to make sure nobody is ever in that position to begin with. It's not a matter of "can we make things better," it's a matter of "how will this make things worse"?

Edited 2008-04-26 16:44 (UTC)

I don't know. When I see another person suffering, and feel their pain, sometimes there's that fear you speak of, yes (I feel it when I hear about instances of transphobia for example). But not always. Sometimes I just don't want them to suffer. There's not much logical explanation for that, it's just something I feel. I don't know. The argument that people ultimately don't really give a shit baffles me. If that selfish fear's a strong element as you argue, why do people even give their lives for others?

I dunno. When I see people making those sorts of statements, sometimes it seems like they're generalizing from their own feelings. That doesn't mean that it doesn't hold true for a lot of people (and I'm sure what you say holds true for many people). But, well.

Well, yeah, generalized fixes would have to be the order. But if I ended up with that kind of power, I'd just do what I said in my response to Relee's comment. Fix the minimum to at least reduce carnage, then make sure no one does further meddling on others against their wills (voluntary meddling's a different thing), then just leave it off at that. I wouldn't fix every ugly thing, because that's far too much to do on a global scale. Humans'd still be petty, etc. after I was done--I couldn't trust myself to know what's best for everyone.

Of course, that's assuming I can manage to keep from being corrupted by said power. That's why my second and last act with it would be to cut off my (and everyone else's) ability to do that stuff.

Truthfully, it'd probably be safest if this kind of global power never came to pass, yeah. Too much random factor, chance in who attains it first. Fortunately, it's most likely that it'll never happen anyway--that kind of scale is difficult to achieve in the first place, and counters can be developed to everything.

In practical terms, it's very improbable and very dangerous. But I sometimes think about it as a pure thought experiment.

Animals developed compassion as an evolutionary mechanism. Mothers have compassion for their children because if the children don't survive, they don't have offspring. Individuals in a group have compassion because the herd/tribe/gang requires teamwork. Compassion is a survival mechanism. After all, life isn't about the survival of an individual, it's about the survival of species.

While changing people on a dramatic level as altering their capacity for violence may not be quite as possible, it's certainly possible to drug the water supply or introduce gasses or other behavior-altering impetus into the environment on a large scale.

I think it's a reasonable course of action to bathe Africa in Empathy Foam. It's certainly better than the genocide most people seem to reccomend.

There're really people that suggest genocide as a solution?

Yeah a lot of people think that genocide would be a good way to end strife in the third world. Not just religious folks either. The logic is that with less people there would be more resources to go around, and the survivors would be able to thrive where the masses are being tortured.

Mostly people urge contraceptive use, but it doesn't work, and the population keeps going up with the resources dwindle. Some folks feel that since they won't listen to reason they have to be put down, like animals, for their own good (or at least the good of whoever survives). Most people who would suggest genocide are patient enough to wait for a pandemic to wipe everybody out, but some of them also support the idea of intentionally causing a pandemic.

I said 'most people seem to reccomend' earlier but that was a bit of an exaggeration. I do hear people suggest that almost anytime the subject comes up, but few are really serious... I hope.

Really do hear some horror stories from around the world though. I'm not sure if the children hate-conscription is worse or if the prevailing superstition that raping a little girl will act as a panacea and cure your aids is worse, though. Brr. *shiver*

"For the good of all of us...except the ones who are dead."

Edited 2008-04-27 18:40 (UTC)

Imagine an entire world of manic, genocidal xenophobes who never have doubts. That scares me far more than our current cultural situation.

Someone else already imagined that. EXTERMINATE!

Daleks!

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Interesting that Assassin's Creed has that kind of dilemma. Haven't yet gotten a chance to play that game, but I'm even more curious now.

I need more data on how this method works and exactly what it does before I can make a judgement.

It's a vague question because I was trying to probe what people would find acceptable and unacceptable. If it helps, think of several examples maybe... One possibility would be altering the mechanics of aggression in their brains so that it only triggers in self-defense, or the use of pacification gas, or whatever. A variety of possible parameters. If this makes the question too general for you to answer, well, I didn't have a precise scenario in mind.

This is a religious question, isn't it? I don't know if it's moral, but I might use it anyway.

What makes you think it's a religious question? I'm curious. Though, as much as religions tend to be about their own moral values (not necessarily shared)...

Well, that's the standard theological argument for why God allows there to be evil in the world when he could easily dispense with it; the argument goes that he wants us to have freedom to choose.

Of course, why it's so important for us to have this choice that we must endure all the horrors of the world is usually not addressed, nor is why a good being would set us up to be potentially damned... that usually comes back to "God's will" or the unknowable, which really is no answer other than "Because."

Several completely different opinions...

True, it would be more significant if people voluntarily stopped doing terrible things to each other, so it would be best of all if free will was retained. That would mean a lot about how humankind had finally grown up and learned to get along with itself. If humankind was artificially forced to be nice, the event wouldn't be meaningful in that way.

However, it would be a surprise if that ever happened, so maybe it would be morally acceptable to use a miraculous device that makes people be nice to each other, even though it does limit free will. If such a device existed, it might be the only possible way to make everyone get along. To stop killing each other. To survive. Is survival more or less important than free will?

A balance could be struck. People may be more likely to be nice voluntarily if they're not being pressured by other people who are doing terrible things all around them. (Being harassed, terrorized, or pushed to act in self-defense or revenge.) It might be sufficient to only use the miracle nice-making device on some people. Then the other people might start being nice out of their own free will, not out of fear of the device, but because they're no longer so much in fear of everyone else. It would only be hard to know who should and shouldn't have their wills influenced.

Maybe if the miracle nice-making device was used on everyone in the world, but only for one generation, it would be enough for the next generation to come out of it as voluntarily nice people. They would have been raised in that context only. I guess there could still be some radicals in the second generation who would proceed to be terrible after all, but one whole generation of universally nice people would still have made a huge cultural impact. A significant paradigm shift.

My method for making people nice?

Drop the world population down to about 15 million.

You mean, mass genocide?

Yep. Less people means less bad interactions, which means that suddenly are as douche-baggy to eachother. Sure, it would take about 100 years to stabalize, but that's alright.

I just woke up, so if any of that doesn't make sense... suffer in pain. :D

You're assuming that the problem lies in human psyches. I don't think that's the case. Biology is value-neutral and can go either way, but true hell is a social construct.

I think it's worth spreading skepticism and an ethics of non-coercion. Non-coercion being what it is, there are no "quick fix" solutions, but we have to get over our addiction to control and quick fixes anyway.

Ha yeah

I don't believe in free will, and I'm a utilitarian, so I don't have any problems with the use of such a device.

Well, okay, I believe in free will. And I am a utilitarian. But I don't know, you'd have to tell me more about the device. Don't people, for the most part, try to do achieve the same goal with their children? Also, doesn't (for instance) the bodhisattva vow essentially commit one theologically to the same effect? Are good parenting and Mahayana Buddhism more acceptable than a magic compassion-zapper because they are a lot of work, or because they might fail (or in the case of Mahayana Buddhism, take aeons and myriad incarnations to achieve)?

Freedom of will versus the prevention of atrocities

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The miraculous nice-making device

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