I'm reminded of Terry Pratchett's image of the row of mugs (with cute little sayings) owned by the torturers of Omnia's Quisition.
This is a generally hard problem but it's as significant now as it was in the aftermath of WWII. I'd say it speaks to the reality of human subjectivity, and it never goes away: I can only wonder if the same will be true of AI, and whether it's possible for a thinking being to really internalize the concept of hard limits to their perception, and build that into their model of the world.
You could say the God concept is a way of trying to internalize the limits to perception: 'something is vastly significant and it's not me, and my understanding does not and cannot encompass it'.
With OR without this concept we as humans are exactly as evil as each other. That's the secret. There isn't a qualitative difference between 'us' and history's great monsters. It's about the choices we've made and how we've acted on them: the rest is rationalization, which we are all subject to in one way or another.
Grappling with this is the Nuremberg moment: the question is 'never mind whether you feel you've been good, what have you done?'
This is a generally hard problem but it's as significant now as it was in the aftermath of WWII. I'd say it speaks to the reality of human subjectivity, and it never goes away: I can only wonder if the same will be true of AI, and whether it's possible for a thinking being to really internalize the concept of hard limits to their perception, and build that into their model of the world.
You could say the God concept is a way of trying to internalize the limits to perception: 'something is vastly significant and it's not me, and my understanding does not and cannot encompass it'.
With OR without this concept we as humans are exactly as evil as each other. That's the secret. There isn't a qualitative difference between 'us' and history's great monsters. It's about the choices we've made and how we've acted on them: the rest is rationalization, which we are all subject to in one way or another.
Grappling with this is the Nuremberg moment: the question is 'never mind whether you feel you've been good, what have you done?'
So, what have they done?