Why do you insist that the human genetic code is “sacred” or “taboo”? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter—we—are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.
For that matter—we—are chemical processes and nothing more.
While this is in some sense true, it doesn’t add up to normality; it is an excuse for avoiding the actual moral issues. Humans are chemical processes; humans are morally significant; therefore at least some chemical processes have moral significance even if we don’t, currently, understand how it arises, and you cannot dismiss a moral question by saying “Chemistry!” any more than you can do so by saying “God says so!”
I don’t think it’s an excuse—it’s an aside from the rest of the quote. If you take out that sentence, the quote still makes sense. I think the moral question (from a consequentialist point of view, at least) is put aside when he assumes (accurately, in my opinion) that the tool is “useful”. It’s usefulness to humans is all that matters, which is his point.
at least some chemical processes have moral significance even if we don’t, currently, understand how it arises
Moral significance is not a fact about morally significant humans. It’s a fact about the other humans who view them as morally significant.
Our brains’ moral reasoning doesn’t know about, or depend on, the chemical implementations of morally significant humans’ bodies. Therefore there are no moral questions about chemistry, including human biochemistry.
The original quote is correct: DNA should not be held sacred; DNA-related therapy is a tool like any biological or medical procedure. It has no moral status, and should not be assigned qualities like sacredness. Only specific applications of tools have moral status.
As I said, morality is in the eye of the beholder; one might therefore think it’s possible to assign moral status to anything one wishes. However, assigning moral status to tools, methods, nonspecific operations, generally leads to repugnant conclusions and/or contradictions. Some people nevertheless say certain tools are immoral in their eyes. Other people value e.g. logical consistency higher than moral instincts. It’s a matter of choice.
Our brains’ moral reasoning doesn’t know about, or depend on, the chemical implementations of morally significant humans’ bodies. Therefore there are no moral questions about chemistry, including human biochemistry.
I suspect that, if I propose to drip an unknown liquid into your eyes, you will find the question of its chemistry very morally significant indeed.
Since our morality is embedded in, and arises from, physics, the moral questions are indeed at some level about chemistry even if the current black-box reasoning we use has no idea how to deal with information expressed in chemical terms. When we fully understand morality, we will be able to take apart the high-level reasoning that our brains implement into reasoning about the moral significance of individual atoms.
As I said: “Only specific applications of tools have moral status.” The action of dripping liquid into my eyes has moral status. The chemical formula of the liquid, whatever it may be, does not. The only chemistry really relevant to morality is the chemistry of our brains that assign moral status to other things.
I know other formulations of “what is morally significant” are possible and sometimes seem useful, but they also seem to lead to the conclusion that everything is morally significant—e.g. assigning moral value to entire universe-states—which does away with the useful concept of some smaller thing being morally significant vs. amoral.
Great quote, especially the last line should be emphasised. Awesome audio of Yang quotes. The comments are also surprisingly entertaining and interesting especially consider this is on YouTube.
Post-humanism, egalitarianism, and authoritarianism. MMmmmm. . . I wish I could vote for Chairman Yang.
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I would say that Yang represents the new view on the chinese philisophy of legalism. Legalism promotes the rule of law, where peace and happyness is achieved through the fear of the punishments. If people fear the law, they don’t commit crime, if crime is not commited the people are happy. Sheng-ji Yang has a very simillar view to Shang Yang- the core philisopher of legalism and the advisor of the Qin Dynasty.
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I don’t think that view of Legalism really fits the snapshot we see of Shen-ji Yang’s philosophy in the game. His subjects are not meant to be afraid of violating the law, they are meant to be genetically tailored to follow biological imperatives and instincts that are compatible with a code of laws. Like his quote about the Gene Jack not being oppressed because he is created with the desire to work and live as he does without urges that would contradict his role.
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Yang was supposed to be representative of a political/social philosophy without making it unambiguously evil. Whether you percieve any faction leader as evil or good has more to do with what you think would be an ideal society than the writters pinning the villain tag on them. That makes SMAC very awesome compared to all those “Civ” games where the civs are all pretty much the same.
My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack’s muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, “Essays on Mind and Matter”
--Terry Pratchett, Hogfather, tweaked for greater generality
In the original, Susan finishes her line with “an old story”, but by having DoR cut her off she could just as easily have said “chemistry” or “data” or something like that.
Lineage has been considered sacred since before it was known what chemicals made it up—think royal families, horror at the idea of racial intermixing, etc. And I don’t see why that should change because we know what it’s made of—for other reasons maybe, but not that.
Because some of the crazy reasons people have had for believing in stupidities like the divine right of kings, blood purity, racial supremacy etc. DO NOT SURVIVE EXAMINATION when you understand the underlying process.
Once you re-name racial purity as, at best, a vulnerable monoculture (and at worst, inbreeding), racism becomes harder to defend intellectually. I have no idea how much its declining social acceptability is related to that. Probably not much. My intuition is that most “inbreeders” (as I call ’em) are not very intellectual about their racism anyway.
I love the Alpha Centauri quotes, the game probably infected me with lost of the memes that made LW appealing. For the longest time I couldn’t see any virtue or weirdtopia in the Yang’s Human Hive society, but I eventually came to saw the dystopian possibilities of it are no greater than that those of the other factions. Also in the context of the difficulty of a positive singularity (transcendence in the game) it has pragmatic arguments in its favour.
– Chairman Sheng-ji Yang in Alpha Centauri
While this is in some sense true, it doesn’t add up to normality; it is an excuse for avoiding the actual moral issues. Humans are chemical processes; humans are morally significant; therefore at least some chemical processes have moral significance even if we don’t, currently, understand how it arises, and you cannot dismiss a moral question by saying “Chemistry!” any more than you can do so by saying “God says so!”
I don’t think it’s an excuse—it’s an aside from the rest of the quote. If you take out that sentence, the quote still makes sense. I think the moral question (from a consequentialist point of view, at least) is put aside when he assumes (accurately, in my opinion) that the tool is “useful”. It’s usefulness to humans is all that matters, which is his point.
In-game, Yang does view it as an excuse, though, because he’s more or less a totalitarian, nihilistic sociopath.
Moral significance is not a fact about morally significant humans. It’s a fact about the other humans who view them as morally significant.
Our brains’ moral reasoning doesn’t know about, or depend on, the chemical implementations of morally significant humans’ bodies. Therefore there are no moral questions about chemistry, including human biochemistry.
The original quote is correct: DNA should not be held sacred; DNA-related therapy is a tool like any biological or medical procedure. It has no moral status, and should not be assigned qualities like sacredness. Only specific applications of tools have moral status.
As I said, morality is in the eye of the beholder; one might therefore think it’s possible to assign moral status to anything one wishes. However, assigning moral status to tools, methods, nonspecific operations, generally leads to repugnant conclusions and/or contradictions. Some people nevertheless say certain tools are immoral in their eyes. Other people value e.g. logical consistency higher than moral instincts. It’s a matter of choice.
I suspect that, if I propose to drip an unknown liquid into your eyes, you will find the question of its chemistry very morally significant indeed.
Since our morality is embedded in, and arises from, physics, the moral questions are indeed at some level about chemistry even if the current black-box reasoning we use has no idea how to deal with information expressed in chemical terms. When we fully understand morality, we will be able to take apart the high-level reasoning that our brains implement into reasoning about the moral significance of individual atoms.
As I said: “Only specific applications of tools have moral status.” The action of dripping liquid into my eyes has moral status. The chemical formula of the liquid, whatever it may be, does not. The only chemistry really relevant to morality is the chemistry of our brains that assign moral status to other things.
I know other formulations of “what is morally significant” are possible and sometimes seem useful, but they also seem to lead to the conclusion that everything is morally significant—e.g. assigning moral value to entire universe-states—which does away with the useful concept of some smaller thing being morally significant vs. amoral.
Right. Which is the same as the point I was originally making: At least one chemical process has moral significance.
That’s true. It seems I’ve been arguing past you or at a strawman. Sorry.
“It is every citizen’s final duty to step into the Tanks, and become one with all the people.”
-- Recycling Tanks, Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, Alpha Centauri
Great quote, especially the last line should be emphasised. Awesome audio of Yang quotes. The comments are also surprisingly entertaining and interesting especially consider this is on YouTube.
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-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, “Essays on Mind and Matter”
This argument may have influenced my thoughts several years later.
Susan: Oh that’s just --
Death of Rats: WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘JUST’?
--Terry Pratchett, Hogfather, tweaked for greater generality
In the original, Susan finishes her line with “an old story”, but by having DoR cut her off she could just as easily have said “chemistry” or “data” or something like that.
Technically, he just said SQUEAK. Which is even more general.
Lineage has been considered sacred since before it was known what chemicals made it up—think royal families, horror at the idea of racial intermixing, etc. And I don’t see why that should change because we know what it’s made of—for other reasons maybe, but not that.
Because some of the crazy reasons people have had for believing in stupidities like the divine right of kings, blood purity, racial supremacy etc. DO NOT SURVIVE EXAMINATION when you understand the underlying process.
Once you re-name racial purity as, at best, a vulnerable monoculture (and at worst, inbreeding), racism becomes harder to defend intellectually. I have no idea how much its declining social acceptability is related to that. Probably not much. My intuition is that most “inbreeders” (as I call ’em) are not very intellectual about their racism anyway.
I love the Alpha Centauri quotes, the game probably infected me with lost of the memes that made LW appealing. For the longest time I couldn’t see any virtue or weirdtopia in the Yang’s Human Hive society, but I eventually came to saw the dystopian possibilities of it are no greater than that those of the other factions. Also in the context of the difficulty of a positive singularity (transcendence in the game) it has pragmatic arguments in its favour.