I’d like to discuss, with anyone who is interested, the ideas of Metaphysics Of Quality, by Robert Pirsig (laid out in Lila, An enquiry into Morals)
There are many aspects to MOQ that might make a rationalist cringe, like moral realism and giving evolution a path and purpose. But there are many interesting concepts which i heard for the first time when I read MOQ. The fourfold division of inorganic, biological, social and intellectual static patterns of quality is quite intruiging. Many things that the transhumanist community talks about actually interact at the edges of these definitions.
nanotech runs at the border of inorganic quality and biological quality.
evolutionary psychology runs at the border of biological and social quality
at a much simpler level, a community like less wrong runs at the border of social and intellectual quality
Inspite of this, I find the layered level of this understanding is probably useful in understanding present systems and designing new systems.
Maintaining stability at a lower level of quality is probably very important whenever new dynamic things are done at a higher level. Freidrich Hayek emphasises the rule of law and stable contracts, which are the basis of the dynamism of the free market.
Francis Fukuyama came out with the idea of “The end of history” with democratic liberalism being the final system, a permanent social static quality. This was an extremely bold view, but someone who understood even a bit of MOQ could understand that changes at a lower level could stil happen. No social structure can be permanent without the biological level being fixed. And Bingo! Fukuyama being a smart man, understood this and his next book was “Our posthuman future”, which urged the extreme social control of biological manipulation, in particular, ceasing research.
In Pirsig’s view, social quality overriding biological quality is moral. I don’t agree with Pirsig’s view that when social quality overrides biological quality, it is always moral. It is societal pressure that creates incentives for female infanticide in India, which overrides the biological 50-50 ratio. This will result in huge social problems in the future.
A proper understanding of the universe, when we arrive at it, would have all these intricate layers laid out in detail. But it is interesting to talk about even now,when the picture is incomplete.
No social structure can be permanent without the biological level being fixed. And Bingo! Fukuyama being a smart man, understood this and his next book was “Our posthuman future”, which urged the extreme social control of biological manipulation, in particular, ceasing research.
Really? I would have arrived at the opposite conclusion. No social structure can be permanent without the biological level being fixed, therefore we should do more research into biological alteration in order to stabilize our biology should it become unstable.
For instance, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis would enable us to almost eradicate most genetic diseases, thus maintaining our biological quality. I’m not saying it doesn’t have corresponding problems, just that an attitude of “we should cease research in this field because we might find something dangerous” is overreacting.
I don’t support Fukuyama’s conclusion. I just was mentioning that Fukuyama realised that his “end of history” hypothesis was obsolete as the biological quality patterns, that he assumed were more or less unchanging, are not fixed.
Genetic engineering is an intellectual + social pattern imposing on a biological pattern. By a naive reading of Pirsig, it appears as moral. But if the biological pattern is not fully understood, then it might lead to many unanticipated consequences. I definitely support the eradication of genetic diseaeses, if the changes made are those that are present in many normal people and without much downside. I support intelligence amplification, but we simply don’t know enough to do it without issues.
Eliezer’s perspective is that humans are godshatter (a hodge podge of many biological, social and intellectual static patterns) and it will take a very powerful intelligence to understand morality and extrapolate it. I believe that thinking about Pirsig’s work can inform us a little on areas we should choose to understand first.
No social structure can be permanent without the biological level being fixed.
This seems incorrect, as it’s not hard to imagine a social structure supporting a wide variety of different biological/non-biological intelligences, as long as they were reasonably close to each other in morality-space. There’s plenty of things at the level of biology that have no impact on morality that we’d certainly like to change.
During the process of creation of those non-biological intelligences or modification of the biological persons, the social structure would be in a flux. There will be some similarities maintained, but many changes would also be there.
According to our laws, murder is illegal, but erasure of an upload with backup till the last day would not be classified as a grave crime as much as murdering an un-backed up person. These changes would be at the social level.
I’d like to discuss, with anyone who is interested, the ideas of Metaphysics Of Quality, by Robert Pirsig (laid out in Lila, An enquiry into Morals)
There are many aspects to MOQ that might make a rationalist cringe, like moral realism and giving evolution a path and purpose. But there are many interesting concepts which i heard for the first time when I read MOQ. The fourfold division of inorganic, biological, social and intellectual static patterns of quality is quite intruiging. Many things that the transhumanist community talks about actually interact at the edges of these definitions.
nanotech runs at the border of inorganic quality and biological quality.
evolutionary psychology runs at the border of biological and social quality
at a much simpler level, a community like less wrong runs at the border of social and intellectual quality
Inspite of this, I find the layered level of this understanding is probably useful in understanding present systems and designing new systems.
Maintaining stability at a lower level of quality is probably very important whenever new dynamic things are done at a higher level. Freidrich Hayek emphasises the rule of law and stable contracts, which are the basis of the dynamism of the free market.
Francis Fukuyama came out with the idea of “The end of history” with democratic liberalism being the final system, a permanent social static quality. This was an extremely bold view, but someone who understood even a bit of MOQ could understand that changes at a lower level could stil happen. No social structure can be permanent without the biological level being fixed. And Bingo! Fukuyama being a smart man, understood this and his next book was “Our posthuman future”, which urged the extreme social control of biological manipulation, in particular, ceasing research.
In Pirsig’s view, social quality overriding biological quality is moral. I don’t agree with Pirsig’s view that when social quality overrides biological quality, it is always moral. It is societal pressure that creates incentives for female infanticide in India, which overrides the biological 50-50 ratio. This will result in huge social problems in the future.
A proper understanding of the universe, when we arrive at it, would have all these intricate layers laid out in detail. But it is interesting to talk about even now,when the picture is incomplete.
Really? I would have arrived at the opposite conclusion. No social structure can be permanent without the biological level being fixed, therefore we should do more research into biological alteration in order to stabilize our biology should it become unstable.
For instance, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis would enable us to almost eradicate most genetic diseases, thus maintaining our biological quality. I’m not saying it doesn’t have corresponding problems, just that an attitude of “we should cease research in this field because we might find something dangerous” is overreacting.
I don’t support Fukuyama’s conclusion. I just was mentioning that Fukuyama realised that his “end of history” hypothesis was obsolete as the biological quality patterns, that he assumed were more or less unchanging, are not fixed.
Genetic engineering is an intellectual + social pattern imposing on a biological pattern. By a naive reading of Pirsig, it appears as moral. But if the biological pattern is not fully understood, then it might lead to many unanticipated consequences. I definitely support the eradication of genetic diseaeses, if the changes made are those that are present in many normal people and without much downside. I support intelligence amplification, but we simply don’t know enough to do it without issues.
Eliezer’s perspective is that humans are godshatter (a hodge podge of many biological, social and intellectual static patterns) and it will take a very powerful intelligence to understand morality and extrapolate it. I believe that thinking about Pirsig’s work can inform us a little on areas we should choose to understand first.
This seems incorrect, as it’s not hard to imagine a social structure supporting a wide variety of different biological/non-biological intelligences, as long as they were reasonably close to each other in morality-space. There’s plenty of things at the level of biology that have no impact on morality that we’d certainly like to change.
During the process of creation of those non-biological intelligences or modification of the biological persons, the social structure would be in a flux. There will be some similarities maintained, but many changes would also be there.
According to our laws, murder is illegal, but erasure of an upload with backup till the last day would not be classified as a grave crime as much as murdering an un-backed up person. These changes would be at the social level.