ENT - Stigma

[Riedquat]

I disagree that any position concerning morals and ethics and values is ultimately an emotional one; it's more to do with the underlying reward function of the individual. I would say you're right in that it's typically tied with emotion in the specific case of humans, but I don't believe that it has to be so.

The most obvious example would be the thought experiment of the Paperclip maximizer: an intelligent machine told to create paper clips, which eventually converts the entire universe into paperclips. Clearly the paperclip maximizer is intelligent (it's smart enough to figure out interstellar travel, how to deal with those pesky lifeforms interrupting it's paperclip manufacturing, etc...) and it obviously values making paperclips (it's "morality" is that anything is acceptable so long as it is to make paperclips). BUT the maximizer has no emotions. It's values are undeniably arbitrary, but they are not emotional ones (well, unless you want to call "# of paperclips made" an emotion ).

I should've said beyond preprogrammed drives - instincts in animals, code in a machine. At that level it's really just cause and effect but there's no concept of morality there (although the instincts are very much tied up with some emotions - fear makes you flee from danger for example). The paperclip machine sounds little different from an intelligent water wheel. If it's not provided with any means of control it'll still keep turning as the water flows no matter what else it's capable of.

As I recall, the review of The Most Toys illustrated how even an emotionless being like Data could still reach conclusion about the right course of action based on person evaluation of action and consequences.

At most you can substitute some built-in criteria a being is compelled to fulfill. I don't believe that an emotionless being could ever have any motive to do anything, at least beyond instinctive drives (or the machine equivalent). The very concept of the right course of action requires more.

[Fianna]

Emotions are the impulses that drive us, the source of motivation. Without emotions, there's no motivation to do anything.

Data, or the hypothetical Paperclip Maximizer, may not have human emotions, but they must have some impulse driving them, otherwise they wouldn't be taking any actions.

[Yukaphile]

I see it as we're programmed beings, subject and slave to our impulses, and will never grow past that without emotion. A bit too hippie?

[abki]

Emotions are the impulses that drive us, the source of motivation. Without emotions, there's no motivation to do anything.

Data, or the hypothetical Paperclip Maximizer, may not have human emotions, but they must have some impulse driving them, otherwise they wouldn't be taking any actions.

I agree that the Paperclip Maximizer has an arbitrary impulse driving it, I just wanted to illustrate that the arbitrary impulse doesn't have to be human-like emotion.

I disagree however that all human motivation must come from emotion. I wouldn't consider physical pain to be a human emotion, but I am definitely motivated to avoid pain.

I see it as we're programmed beings, subject and slave to our impulses, and will never grow past that without emotion. A bit too hippie?

I would disagree, I would say that emotions are just part of the impulses/arbitrary reward function. Although that may just be me arguing about the semantics of "impulse"

[Fianna]

Ah, but pain only motivates us because we have an emotional response to it. If we had no emotions, we'd still feel pain, but we'd find it no more or less pleasant than any other physical sensation, and so would have no reason to act upon it.

[Riedquat]

Ah, but pain only motivates us because we have an emotional response to it. If we had no emotions, we'd still feel pain, but we'd find it no more or less pleasant than any other physical sensation, and so would have no reason to act upon it.

Agreed, although there are probably some details to thrash out about where the boundaries lie - you can build a machine that could detect fire and move away to avoid damage, and there are some instinctive reactions we have that I wouldn't necessarily call emotional - hear a loud noise and jump for example (the shaken feeling afterwards I would though).

But if you build an intelligent machine based on pure logic alone, with no preprogrammed responses to anything it will have no reason to do anything other than sit there, no reason for even self-preservation. It has no reason to care or bother about anything, even itself. And no reason to threaten anything either.

[Artabax]

The problem with Chuck''s outrage here is that Bigots always view themselves as the ones thinking logically and us as the ones blinded by emotion.

Any position concerning morals and ethics and values is ultimately an emotional one. And because they're the things that make life worth living they're the most important ones - beyond even the necessities for survival (what's the point of surviving otherwise?) Logic is only of any use in working out how to get to what your ultimately emotional or sentimental feelings say is worth having.

Some people don't like that because they believe they are rationally correct, or that it has no absolute means of differentiating between angels and demons, to which all I can say is, yep, that's the universe for you.

The Universe for you is that bears, eagles and many species mostly live alone, whereas humans, wolves, penguins and many species mostly live in clans. Care for the Clan is a very rational and evolutionary system of morality. Clans with too many traitors who betray the Clan go extinct; Clans with enough Patriots reproduce after their kind.

Then humans fuck up this simple and glorious system. We invent agriculture, so there are more people about and over centuries morality grows and we are supposed to care about our tribe, our city, our province, our nation, all humans, all mammals etc etc etc.

Morality starts off simple and rational.

Any position concerning morals and ethics and values is ultimately an emotional one

Close but no cigar. Morality is very complicated and many people do indeed give up and cling to some emotionally satisfying dogma which defines whom they should cherish and whom they must destroy.

Viced Rhino proposes a rational system of morality, the Veil of Ignorance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kQl46dBx7I Theft, rape, murder, slavery, would these be good in a well ordered city? Veil of Ignorance (VoI) defines you gotta decide whether an act is permitted or forbidden before you are told whether you do that act or that act is done to you.

Morality can be rational. You are correct that it often ain't.

[Fianna]

If you behave a certain way because you believe it will benefit you (even if only indirectly, such as by helping to create the kind of society you want to live in), then it's not an example of morality, just basic self-interest. It's only morality if you're behaving a certain way because you believe it's the right thing to do, not because you expect to gain anything other than the satisfaction of doing it.

As a side note, if your reason for refraining from rape, murder, slavery, etc. is that you don't want to create a society where such things are tolerated, then it'd still be perfectly okay to kill someone, so long as you make it look like an accident (if no one knows a murder's been committed, then the murder will not impact society).

[Riedquat]

...
Morality can be rational. You are correct that it often ain't.

Emotions evolved for a reason, if they did overall help us survive then they wouldn't have evolved. That doesn't change the driver for us being an emotional one though. The rational outcomes you mention still all depend on the idea that a particular outcome is still somehow preferable, but there's no particular logical reason to say the human race (or any other) surviving and thriving is a more rational one than it wiping itself out. That life succeeds is just an outcome of how things happen to be as much as the fact that mountains form or stars shine. The perfectly logical being with no emotion has no more reason to value life more than the arrangement of pebbles on a beach.

[Beastro]

The problem with Chuck''s outrage here is that Bigots always view themselves as the ones thinking logically and us as the ones blinded by emotion.

Any position concerning morals and ethics and values is ultimately an emotional one. And because they're the things that make life worth living they're the most important ones - beyond even the necessities for survival (what's the point of surviving otherwise?) Logic is only of any use in working out how to get to what your ultimately emotional or sentimental feelings say is worth having.

Some people don't like that because they believe they are rationally correct, or that it has no absolute means of differentiating between angels and demons, to which all I can say is, yep, that's the universe for you.

I disagree that any position concerning morals and ethics and values is ultimately an emotional one; it's more to do with the underlying reward function of the individual. I would say you're right in that it's typically tied with emotion in the specific case of humans, but I don't believe that it has to be so.

The most obvious example would be the thought experiment of the Paperclip maximizer: an intelligent machine told to create paper clips, which eventually converts the entire universe into paperclips. Clearly the paperclip maximizer is intelligent (it's smart enough to figure out interstellar travel, how to deal with those pesky lifeforms interrupting it's paperclip manufacturing, etc...) and it obviously values making paperclips (it's "morality" is that anything is acceptable so long as it is to make paperclips). BUT the maximizer has no emotions. It's values are undeniably arbitrary, but they are not emotional ones (well, unless you want to call "# of paperclips made" an emotion ).

As I recall, the review of The Most Toys illustrated how even an emotionless being like Data could still reach conclusion about the right course of action based on person evaluation of action and consequences.

Such a story implies a fiat of sorts that is fundamental to Data: He's a character played by an emotional being trying his best to not show emotion but inevitably will. It's also the reason why Data is naively charming and not outright creepy and repelling in an Uncanny Valley way an android like him would be.

The role emotion plays in us is something of a catalyst. I like to think of it as the powder in a bullet that ignites and launches the latter. A bullet, though, requires a barrel to guide it to its target and different barrels have different qualities of accuracy they can lend a bullet, like smooth bore and rifling.

So God knows where a bullet fired outside of a gun will go, but placing a bullet into a barrel without any charge to send it down its path is a non-starter as it has nothing to set it in motion.

I think this matches what I've heard about people who have had the emotional regions of their brain damaged. They don't become Vulcans, they struggle to perform any action to the point of being catatonic. They're unable to do anything because that part of them that pushes them into action is impaired to the point of absence.

I do wish I could find a solid source for that and just have to put it out as hearsay, as it reveals something I think that applies to Vulcans better than being emotionless, that they are in fact more like recovering alcoholics obsessed with falling off the wagon and very stringent in how they act on emotion wishing they could do without it, but allowing just the bare minimum in there to perform an action.

That also reminds me of a bit of an incongruous element to the Vulcans, which is how the Romulans behave. They aren't nice guys most of the time, but they certainly don't act like Vulcans do when emotion takes over them.

Makes me think a bit of their relationship should be explored in depth more that would highlight the trouble in their relationship. One thing that comes to mind is that the Romulans could've originally been the "moderates" of the Vulcans (rather than the unrepentant radial reactionaries they're portrayed as) surrounded by the rest of their wild and crazy race which forced them into xenophobia, close-knit interdependence and insular pride for being the only normal ones in their race. They later left Vulcan as Surak and others found a way to get the rest of their race "on the wagon", but the fundamental animosity between them is now that the Vulcans look on them as alcoholics refusing treatment while the Romulans look on them as crazy drunks trying to punish them for the Vulcans own excesses.

The more I think about that the more I like it. Part of the appeal of the Klingons (and later the Ferengi and to a lesser extent beyond Garek and Dukat, the Cardassians) as an antagonist race is that they have sympathetic elements to them, something which the Romulans rarely were given.