Really? You went straight for a baby right off the bat? A baby is an actor which is specifically not free to do as it wishes, for a large range of very sensible reasons—including but not limited to the fact that it is extremely reliant on third parties (parents or some other adult) to take care of it.
I’m not of the school that a baby is not self-owning, which is to say that it is rightly the property of its parents (but it is certainly not the property of uninvolved third parties, and most certainly not property of the State): I believe that babies have agency, but it is not full agency because babies do not have the capacity to rationally determine what will cause them harm.
Individuals with full agency should be permitted to self-harm—it is the ultimate expression of self-ownership (regardless of how squeamish we might be about it: it imposes psychic costs on others and is maybe self-centred, but to deny an individual free action on the basis that it might make those nearby feel a bit sad, is a perfect justification for not freeing slaves).
Babies are like retards (real retards, not internet retards [99% of whom are within epsilon of normal]): it is rational to deny them full liberty. Babies do not get to do as they will. (But let’s not let the State decide who is a retard or mentally ill—anybody familiar with the term ‘drapetomania’ will immediately see why).
Yes. Of course. It was the blatant flaw in your description of morality. Unless one addresses that one first, there’s hardly a need to discuss subtleties.
A baby is an actor which is specifically not free to do as it wishes, to do as it wishes, for a large range of very sensible reasons
If you’re creating exceptions to your definition of morality for “sensible reasons”, you should hopefully also understand that these sensible reasons won’t be automatically understood by an AI unless they’re actually programmed in. Woe unto us if we think the AI will just automatically understand that when we say “letting individuals do what they will” we mean “individuals with the exception of babies and other people of mentally limited capacity, in whose case different rules apply, mostly having to do with preserving them from harm rather that letting them do whatever”.
In short your description of what morality entails isn’t sufficient, isn’t complete, because it relies on those unspoken and undescribed “sensible reasons”. Once the insufficiency was shown to you you were forced to enhance your description of morality with ideas like “full agency” and the “capacity to rationally determine what will cause them harm”.
And then you conceded of course that it’s not just babies, but other people with mentally limited mental capacity also fall in that category. Your description of morality seems more and more insufficient to explain what we actually mean by morality.
So, do you want to try to redescribe “morality” to include all these details explicitly, instead of just going “except in cases where common sense applies”?
Really? You went straight for a baby right off the bat? A baby is an actor which is specifically not free to do as it wishes, for a large range of very sensible reasons—including but not limited to the fact that it is extremely reliant on third parties (parents or some other adult) to take care of it.
I’m not of the school that a baby is not self-owning, which is to say that it is rightly the property of its parents (but it is certainly not the property of uninvolved third parties, and most certainly not property of the State): I believe that babies have agency, but it is not full agency because babies do not have the capacity to rationally determine what will cause them harm.
Individuals with full agency should be permitted to self-harm—it is the ultimate expression of self-ownership (regardless of how squeamish we might be about it: it imposes psychic costs on others and is maybe self-centred, but to deny an individual free action on the basis that it might make those nearby feel a bit sad, is a perfect justification for not freeing slaves).
Babies are like retards (real retards, not internet retards [99% of whom are within epsilon of normal]): it is rational to deny them full liberty. Babies do not get to do as they will. (But let’s not let the State decide who is a retard or mentally ill—anybody familiar with the term ‘drapetomania’ will immediately see why).
Yes. Of course. It was the blatant flaw in your description of morality. Unless one addresses that one first, there’s hardly a need to discuss subtleties.
If you’re creating exceptions to your definition of morality for “sensible reasons”, you should hopefully also understand that these sensible reasons won’t be automatically understood by an AI unless they’re actually programmed in. Woe unto us if we think the AI will just automatically understand that when we say “letting individuals do what they will” we mean “individuals with the exception of babies and other people of mentally limited capacity, in whose case different rules apply, mostly having to do with preserving them from harm rather that letting them do whatever”.
In short your description of what morality entails isn’t sufficient, isn’t complete, because it relies on those unspoken and undescribed “sensible reasons”. Once the insufficiency was shown to you you were forced to enhance your description of morality with ideas like “full agency” and the “capacity to rationally determine what will cause them harm”.
And then you conceded of course that it’s not just babies, but other people with mentally limited mental capacity also fall in that category. Your description of morality seems more and more insufficient to explain what we actually mean by morality.
So, do you want to try to redescribe “morality” to include all these details explicitly, instead of just going “except in cases where common sense applies”?