Would it be immoral to create virtual people who suffered?

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=Sapo]
whoa, my friend. You just made more logical quantum leaps than a microwave photon between two prisms 3 feet apart.

Each person is an individual conscience. Killing them is an additional wrong on top of the torture. It does not matter how many more there are out there waiting to take this guy’s place.

The point I am trying to make is that if this AI can be brought back with absolutely no conscience of the torture, it is exactly the same as if this torture had never happened.

I realize that this argument might be nearing the ridiculousness of someone coming into your room every night and replacing everything in there with identical copies. Still, if you can’t tell, it makes no difference to you.

How do you know that last night The Toy Owner didn’t pull out your head and reset the whole universe to where you are right now, as you were last night, without any conscience of it. Have you been wronged if that were the case? I do think that it might make TTO a bad person doing this, but to you, there is no difference at all.
[/QUOTE]
I think the word is ‘consciousness’. (Sorry, I don’t normally nitpick but you really threw me for a minute there.)

Why is it wrong to kill a man but not an AI, if there is no shortage or you grow another man to take his place?

Suppose you could erase a human’s memory. Is it morally okay to torture them, and then erase their memory of the torture? Is it hunky-dory to revel in their screams, to languish in their terror…as long as you clean up after yourself?

And can we infer from the argument that if nobody else knows about your misdeeds when the dust settles, than those deeds are not immoral? That it’s “exactly as if those deeds never happened”? So, if I kill everyone, it’s more moral than if I leave one witness behind?

On edit:

[QUOTE=Sapo]
Of course not. While he lived, for whatever length of time, he was aware of the harm done to him. It did happen to him and he was wronged by it. Yes harm, yes foul.
[/QUOTE]
The same applies for the AI prior to the reset.

82

[QUOTE=Sapo]
Of course not. While he lived, for whatever length of time, he was aware of the harm done to him. It did happen to him and he was wronged by it. Yes harm, yes foul.
[/QUOTE]
As **begbert2 ** said; if that’s so for humans, that’s so for AIs. While it existed, for whatever length of time, it was aware of the harm done to it. It did happen to it and it was wronged by it.

83

[QUOTE=Reply]
Unless we are perfect programmers, though, it may be difficult to account for this. Errors in programming, hardware failures, earthquakes, solar flares, etc. may all effect the simulator, and once enough errors accumulate, a few AI beings could begin to notice “something seems weird…”, like the Deja Vus in Matrix.

That question aside, you’re saying it’s okay to torture them just because they won’t remember it afterwards? In that case, does stuff like date rape drugs become okay? Done right, the victim wouldn’t remember any of it anyway.
[/QUOTE]

The important thing is not that they don’t remember it. What matters is that they are replicable. That you can go back to the state they were before the event happened. In effect, that for all practical purposes, the event didn’t happen except in some bizarre parallel universe to which they have no access.

If you erase a person’s memory of an event, there still remains a memory of something lost. I saw it done to my wife when her first childbirth went horribly wrong. She doesn’t remember what happened, but she knows something happened, and she knows there is something she can’t remember. On top of that, of course, she had all the evidence of something having happened, the bruises, the pain, the drug’s hangover. I do believe she is better off not having the memories of what actually happened (I kinda wished I didn’t), but it is not like to her this didn’t happen.

As for our imperfections on running the machine, well. It is our thought exercise, we can assume whatever it is we all convene to assume. I was thinking the machine ran flawlessly. If it doesn’t, then we don’t have the tools to do a clean reset and then we cannot discuss the ethics of doing it.

84

My apologies for quoting either of you haphazardly. I hope neither of you takes this as me valuing one’s opinion over the other. It is just that the issues are the same. Let me know if I am leaving anything unaddressed. (and my apologies for using the wrong word before)

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
As **begbert2 ** said; if that’s so for humans, that’s so for AIs. While it existed, for whatever length of time, it was aware of the harm done to it. It did happen to it and it was wronged by it.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, but in the case of the human, his life is being ended. It is not a reversible process. For the AI, he is being returned to exactly where he was before the torture (or whatever) happened. His torture and death are begin effectively undone.

85

[QUOTE=Sapo]
Yes, but in the case of the human, his life is being ended. It is not a reversible process. For the AI, he is being returned to exactly where he was before the torture (or whatever) happened. His torture and death are begin effectively undone.
[/QUOTE]
How about this; pain changes us. Torturing the old man would, if he survived, make him a different person. I suggest that that would be what is happening to the AI; and thus in essence the tortured AI is being killed and replaced by an AI of the way it used to be but no longer is. It is not a 100% accurate process, not because the saved copy is different, but because the current one is.

Think of it like me killing you and replacing you with your one-year younger self. Have I just “undone” the memory of torture? Or have I essentially killed the person known as “you” and brought back someone who used to be “you”, but likely will no longer be “you” exactly?

86

[QUOTE=Reply]
Hmm… I’m not sure I understand this – in fact, I’m utterly confused – so please correct me when I’m wrong. My question is: What underlying process enables us to “think”? When an AI sim “thinks”, presumably it’s following code of some sort, right? That code consists of algorithms – instructions – which can be reduced down to the flow of electrons through a series of electrical gates on a chip. These chips are created by programmers, who according to you are in turn governed by similar processes that are powered either by an additional simulation layer or, once the last layer is reached, by the laws of physical interactions between the neurons/atoms/subatomicthingamajigs that make up this programmer’s brain… right?

If that’s the case, do we know whether these underlying physical forces act randomly?
[/quote]
Some of the forces involved are quantum mechanical and random, some aren’t. As for the simulation itself, whether true randomness is introduced would depend on the hardware.

[QUOTE=Reply]
Or would these primordial Lego bricks be governed by uncertainty, like Heisenberg in ours? If so, any eventual structure that arose would just have been a fluke – everything would be a fluke aside from the bricks’ own inexplicable existence – and at any given moment, the entire structure of the universe could collapse if one of the underlying Lego bricks randomly floats away, no?
[/quote]
No. First, order is imposed by whatever rules govern how the building blocks hook up; it’s not random. Second, a universe/simulation with randomness in it should be more stable, not less; the structures that exist there have to be more stable to survive.

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
How self-aware does it have to be? Does a chimpanzee qualify? What about an 8-month fetus? A chimp is probably at least as much of an “I don’t know” as the 4-month old baby, and the 8-month fetus probably has the functioning brain to support a person…they certainly can and do easily survive outside the womb at that age.
[/quote]
8 months, at our present level of knowledge should probably be given at least some benefit of the doubt. It doesn’t matter much since 8 month fetuses are only aborted under extreme circumstances, and are typically non-viable or brainless anyway. As for chimps, I’d say that they do deserve protection; more than, say, a squirrel.

[QUOTE=Sapo]
A point that has been neglected so far, is how unique or impossible to replicate are these virtual consciences (VC). If a VC is in a state of suffering or happiness and rebooting the machine and replicating all the variables will lead it to the exact same state of suffering or happiness, then they are yours to torture and destroy. You can always restore them to whatever state you want.
[/QUOTE]
So if someone tortures you and gives you a drug that induces amnesia about the torture that’s moral ? If you undergo an operation without painkillers and the doctor wipes your memory afterwards that makes the agony OK ?

[QUOTE=Sapo]
The point I am trying to make is that if this AI can be brought back with absolutely no conscience of the torture, it is exactly the same as if this torture had never happened.
[/QUOTE]
No, it happened, it still suffered. You are just making retaliation harder, not erasing the evil.

I’ve heard that unethical surgeons have tried to cover up bad anesthesia by giving their victims a drug that blots out recent memories ( sometimes ). Is that ethical ? Is it only ethical when the drug works ? How does that erase the pain ?

87

I have to go, but I leave this: is an evil deed that goes unremembered not evil?

88

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
How about this; pain changes us. Torturing the old man would, if he survived, make him a different person. I suggest that that would be what is happening to the AI; and thus in essence the tortured AI is being killed and replaced by an AI of the way it used to be but no longer is. It is not a 100% accurate process, not because the saved copy is different, but because the current one is.

Think of it like me killing you and replacing you with your one-year younger self. Have I just “undone” the memory of torture? Or have I essentially killed the person known as “you” and brought back someone who used to be “you”, but likely will no longer be “you” exactly?
[/QUOTE]

The big difference is that my younger self is being introduced in my present time. It is not a perfect restoration of my life as I would have lost that year.

The AI is getting reset with the whole universe around it. It is returning unchanged to an unchanged environment. Even the restoration itself is completely invisible to him. For all practical purposes, it just never happened. Not for him, not for the world around him.

89

[QUOTE=begbert2]
I have to go, but I leave this: is an evil deed that goes unremembered not evil?
[/QUOTE]

The person doing the unrememebered evil is still evil, even if the victims cannot remember it.

I will leave you this: All the ads I am getting at the bottom are for pets stuff.

90

[QUOTE=Sapo]
The big difference is that my younger self is being introduced in my present time. It is not a perfect restoration of my life as I would have lost that year.
[/quote]
Imagine then that instead of a year younger, we just go with a clone “saved” at the point just before the torture. Instead of it, you get a nice cold drink of your choice.

I still suggest that this current you (non-tortured) is a considerably different being from tortured-you, and thus what has occurred is the murder of tortured-you. Tortured-you has as much right to exist as cold-drink-you does.

91

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
So if someone tortures you and gives you a drug that induces amnesia about the torture that’s moral ? If you undergo an operation without painkillers and the doctor wipes your memory afterwards that makes the agony OK ?

No, it happened, it still suffered. You are just making retaliation harder, not erasing the evil.

I’ve heard that unethical surgeons have tried to cover up bad anesthesia by giving their victims a drug that blots out recent memories ( sometimes ). Is that ethical ? Is it only ethical when the drug works ? How does that erase the pain ?
[/QUOTE]

Most of your concerns I have addressed in post later than the one you quoted. Let me know if there is anything I missed in my replies.

The short of it is that you are not just erasing the memory. You are returning him back to where he was before the event happened. In effect, it never happened. It would be more akin to you watching an alternate universe where it happened while he lives happily, never been wronged.

As for the memory wiping drugs, that would make for a great GQ thread. I can only offer my very limited experience that I recounted earlier. In short, my wife had to undergo some emergency procedures without the benefits of anesthesia and had her memory of the event wiped. Nothing unethical from the doctor’s side. She was just saving my wife’s life as best as she could.

92

[QUOTE=Sapo]
The AI is getting reset with the whole universe around it. It is returning unchanged to an unchanged environment. Even the restoration itself is completely invisible to him. For all practical purposes, it just never happened. Not for him, not for the world around him.
[/QUOTE]
No. First, the fact is the torture happened, whether it’s remembered or not. Second, what you are doing is spliiting the AI into two copies, and freezing one while you let the other experience agony. Then you kill the second version and clean up the evidence before activating the frozen version.

Consider this similar scenario; I somehow create a perfect copy of you and torture it, then murder it. Then I clean up the evidence and you never know the copy even existed. Does that mean it didn’t happen ? Does that make what I did moral ?

93

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Imagine then that instead of a year younger, we just go with a clone “saved” at the point just before the torture. Instead of it, you get a nice cold drink of your choice.

I still suggest that this current you (non-tortured) is a considerably different being from tortured-you, and thus what has occurred is the murder of tortured-you. Tortured-you has as much right to exist as cold-drink-you does.
[/QUOTE]

I am currently confused with a general tendency to agree with you, although I know there is something that doesn’t fit but I can’t put my finger on it.

I am trying not to dump a stream of thought on you, so I will have to let this be for a little while so I can gather my thoughts. I reserve the right to retract the following:

For now, let me just say that we are running into the issue of digital copies being originals in their own right but without inherent value.

Also that with an AI, you can manipulate the whole environment of the AI, which I am not seeing as possible with a person.

94

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
8 months, at our present level of knowledge should probably be given at least some benefit of the doubt. It doesn’t matter much since 8 month fetuses are only aborted under extreme circumstances, and are typically non-viable or brainless anyway. As for chimps, I’d say that they do deserve protection; more than, say, a squirrel.
[/QUOTE]
Whether or not fetuses are routinely aborted at 8 months gestation is beside the point for this question…they entire discussion is hypothetical, after all. I am in no way arguing for or against the legalization of abortion. My question to you is whether or not it is morally acceptable to abort an 8-month gestation fetus (for whatever reason), based on the same logic as your defense of the AI? And as far as a chimp deserving more protection than a squirrel, how much more? As much as a human infant? A very strong case could be made that your average chimp is as cognitively capable as a young infant, and certainly that it is more self-aware (to use your criteria for why AI should be protected from harm).

95

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
No. First, the fact is the torture happened, whether it’s remembered or not. Second, what you are doing is spliiting the AI into two copies, and freezing one while you let the other experience agony. Then you kill the second version and clean up the evidence before activating the frozen version.

Consider this similar scenario; I somehow create a perfect copy of you and torture it, then murder it. Then I clean up the evidence and you never know the copy even existed. Does that mean it didn’t happen ? Does that make what I did moral ?
[/QUOTE]

Again, I feel that my keystrokes are coming faster than my thoughts, so I will leave this until tomorrow when I have a fresher mind.

Until then, my thought is that a perfectly replicable AI in a perfectly replicable universe is somehow disposable. I do understand what you are saying, that you are still torturing an actual consciousness, no matter how many identical copies are out there. This does not affect the other copies, though, and they are potentially infinite.

I do think (and agree with everyone, I believe) that this torture does make the torturer a bad person, even if it is somehow proved to be insignificat to the “victim”. I find it very similar to torturing ants. I don’t even think of ants as individuals but as part of a super organism, but I am not comfortable in the presence of a person who makes a habit of torturing them.

What I am not sure is that in a world where infinite identical copies of a consciousness are possible, what the value of these copies is.

96

Just a thought, but unless you consider consciousness to be infinite (and I should admit that I do, but I know that most people in here don’t), how is there are distinction between suffering of a conscious entity that will be immediately forgotten and suffering of a conscious entity that will be… ultimately forgotten?

[QUOTE=Reply]
What I was trying to get at is that there is no “universal code of morality”.
[/QUOTE]

Well, no, of course not. There’s a PERL code of morality, a Java code of morality, and a C++ code of morality, to name but three.
D&D

97

[QUOTE=straight man]
There’s a PERL code of morality
[/QUOTE]

Huh. I thought it was a PERL code of wisdom.

98

[QUOTE=straight man]
There’s a PERL code of morality
[/QUOTE]

You need to be true to it, if you want to enter the PERLy gates.

99

Ok. Back to the topic at hand. I think that any attempt at trying to make a parallel to this on our “real” world is bound to fail because to make it work, you need to twist reality so much that you are pushing it into being more like a simulation. That is the opposite of what this exercise is about.

The point that is growing on me, though, is that of the simulation being in actual suffering while the torture is happening. Although it can be recreated and returned to the point before the torture, he is not supposed to know that that is the case. This instance of the AI is actually being tortured and dying. That we can later create another instance that is not affected at all by this torture, makes things ok for that other instance, but not for the tortured one.

The issue I have is whether these two instances are really separate individuals or are somehow the same.

100

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]

Pain is a particular program in our minds, not some sort of “pain juice” that an AI can’t have. In fact, phantom limb pain is proof of concept; someone suffering phantom limb pain is in essence feeling pain from a part of his body that his brain is simulating. If his whole body was simulated there’s no reason to believe it couldn’t hurt.

[/quote]

Does an AI “feel” an upleasent sensation or does it just have sensors indicating damaged components that need repair? If I program a robot to recognize that fire will cause damage and thus avoid it, is it cruel to chase it around the room with a blowtorch? At what level of AI does it become cruel?