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Comment by SlyShy | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't surprise me, but it does have worrying ethical implications. What if there were a machine to make everyone moral? Would it be immoral to use it? Or would be immoral not to?

Edit with expansion of scenario, so it is clearer what I'm getting at: The situation I envision is a machine that can be programmed to produce some set of "morality" as it were. Who gets to decide what the moral system is, and who it is applied to? Certainly we wouldn't want a corporation or an unelected body to do it. But we also think the machine would be useful in reducing senseless tragedy like murder.

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Use the machine on yourself first.

Then you're guaranteed to make the moral decision.

I'll give you props for the clever answer that circumvents the question. ;)

It's a good answer, not just clever. The issue he's addressing, clarified, is, "What if we had a source of infallible (moral) knowledge?"

Then, "ask that source, not me, you, or any other fallible human" is not just clever but correct.

However, infallible sources of knowledge badly violate everything we know about epistemology. So don't expect to actually find one. What interests me more is this issue:

If I had a magnet that made people act a certain way, and I thought that certain way was moral/good, then should I use it on people? The answer then is no, in the event that I disagree with someone about what's good, I shouldn't force them with magnets; it could be me who is mistaken not them. I should instead persuade them to use the magnet voluntarily.

What's good about a discussion with attempted persuasion is it could go either way. I could end up persuaded, or him. This is different than using the magnet which can't go either way, so if it's a mistake there's no possibility of it being corrected.

The issue he's addressing, clarified, is, "What if we had a source of infallible (moral) knowledge?"

Er, that's not a clarification of "The situation I envision is a machine that can be programmed to produce some set of "morality" as it were."

It's a completely different thing.

> What if there were a machine to make everyone moral?

is the issue addressed by jjs

But since SlyShy started the thread, and jjs replied to him, I think I'll go with SlyShy's expansion of what he meant. Feel free to choose for yourself what SlyShy was talking about, but let's not confuse things by bringing jjs into it, hm? ;)

Edit: aaaand I missed that the poster you were replying to was also SlyShy, changing the point of your comment. Nevermind me. Let's move along. Nothing to see.

Won't work. You have to choose the machine's moral decision outcome before you use it, which means that you're making the decision while still "immoral" (for the lack of a better word).

The question "What if there were a machine to make everyone moral?" implicitly assumed it would make people moral, whatever that is, as a premise, rather than moral according to someone's judgment. This reading may be debatable, but I think that's how he took it.

I suppose behaving morally is two problems, then:

a) Deciding what is moral, and

b) Doing it even if you don't want to.

A machine which helped you do (b) would be useful even if it couldn't do (a).

Sounds like you are assuming that "moral" is an exact concept. Practically speaking, there seems to be lots of cases where opinions on what is moral differ: Abortion, porn, finance...

What would worry me with a machine that could tweak everyone to the same 'standard' moral is who gets to decide what that standard is: Having my moral controlled by the porn industry, Goldman Sachs or the religious right all seems equally bad.

I like my moral just the way it is, thank you :)

No, actually, that's part of what makes this question interesting to me. The situation I envision is a machine that can be programmed to produce some set of "morality" as it were. Who gets to decide what the moral system is, and who it is applied to? Certainly we wouldn't want a corporation or an unelected body to do it. But we also think the machine would be useful in reducing senseless tragedy like murder.

i think one's capacity for self delusion/rationalization vastly outweighs whatever one's moral compass is telling them to do.

before you went applying this to folks' brains, you could poll convicted criminals to determine what sort of morality they're operating off of, and see if it even differs statistically from the population as a whole. i'd be surprised if it did. perhaps someone has already studied this? any ideas?

you could poll convicted criminals to determine what sort of morality they're operating off of, and see if it even differs statistically from the population as a whole.

There have been studies of this nature. I recall seeing a report about such interviews with criminals quite a long time ago, on the United States television program Sixty Minutes. Convicted criminals generally use considerably different moral reasoning from typical members of the public without criminal records. One example: a prison inmate was asked how he felt about taking other people's possessions. He replied, "I think of it as MY thing, not his thing."

Who needs a machine when drugs are so popular? Ritalin to make kids behave, Antidepressants to make people more lively, Amobarbital to make people honest, etc. Morals are a fickle thing and I don't see how any meaningful conclusion can be made from asking the question. "How moral is an atomic bomb?" is just as meaningless a question to ask.

This isn't about changing how likely someone is behave morally, this is about changing the criteria they use for making moral decisions. Specifically, they're knocking out the ability to use theory of mind to guess a person's intentions.

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