Foundational questions to ponder: am I really God, or do I just think I’m God? How would I test this premise? I’d take a very long time to figure this out. Do I (or the humans) incur any penalty for a delay in encoding morality?
Also, are the humans in question subject to forces of evolution or are we talking about a static landscape? If we mean literal Homo Sapiens, then whatever we encode applies to a finite window as the creatures we manipulate will eventually evolve into something else.
You’re able to set everyone’s moral framework and create new humans, however once they are created you cannot undo or try again. You also cannot rely on being able to influence the world post creation.
Assume humans will be placed on the planet in an evolved state (like current Homo Sapiens) and they can continue evolving but will possess a pretty strong drive to follow the framework you embed (akin to the disgust response that humans have to seeing gore or decay).
I apologize for the simplistic response: if we’re talking about a version of current Homo Sapiens, then they already have a perfectly functional meta-ethical system encoded into them. Otherwise they would not have evolved into humans. The quality of being human must necessarily include all the iterative development that got the creatures there.
I must therefore conclude that if I indeed have the power of God and felt the need to intervene in a disruptive manner to rewire the poor human’s ethical system, I must actually be the Devil… and any action taken along this path would therefor be inherently evil. Evil actors typically think they are Gods and cannot tell the difference.
Fair enough! I like the spirit of this answer, probably broadly agree, although makes me think “surely I’d want to modify some people’s moral beliefs”…
Of course you do. Me too! Humans are compelled by a need for mutual domestication. It’s what sustains our bonds and long-term survival. In many ways culture and society are a kind of marketplace of morality modification.
Foundational questions to ponder: am I really God, or do I just think I’m God? How would I test this premise? I’d take a very long time to figure this out. Do I (or the humans) incur any penalty for a delay in encoding morality?
Also, are the humans in question subject to forces of evolution or are we talking about a static landscape? If we mean literal Homo Sapiens, then whatever we encode applies to a finite window as the creatures we manipulate will eventually evolve into something else.
You’re able to set everyone’s moral framework and create new humans, however once they are created you cannot undo or try again. You also cannot rely on being able to influence the world post creation.
Assume humans will be placed on the planet in an evolved state (like current Homo Sapiens) and they can continue evolving but will possess a pretty strong drive to follow the framework you embed (akin to the disgust response that humans have to seeing gore or decay).
I apologize for the simplistic response: if we’re talking about a version of current Homo Sapiens, then they already have a perfectly functional meta-ethical system encoded into them. Otherwise they would not have evolved into humans. The quality of being human must necessarily include all the iterative development that got the creatures there.
I must therefore conclude that if I indeed have the power of God and felt the need to intervene in a disruptive manner to rewire the poor human’s ethical system, I must actually be the Devil… and any action taken along this path would therefor be inherently evil. Evil actors typically think they are Gods and cannot tell the difference.
Fair enough! I like the spirit of this answer, probably broadly agree, although makes me think “surely I’d want to modify some people’s moral beliefs”…
Of course you do. Me too! Humans are compelled by a need for mutual domestication. It’s what sustains our bonds and long-term survival. In many ways culture and society are a kind of marketplace of morality modification.