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Philosophy Rollercoaster: Eigenmorality
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Ila Dace
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2014-06-22 00:08:01 UTC
Long read, which is why I call it a rollercoaster: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820&re=1

tl;dr: PageRank for Great Justice / Orwell at 3 RPMs, but maybe not...


For the more old-school, a summary.

What if we developed a mathematical model that could rank morality, using the same kind of notion that Google's PageRank does. Moral people are those who cooperate with other moral people, and who do not cooperate with immoral people.

What follows in The Fine Article is a description of experiments in that direction, and an analysis of the flaws and possible remediation of those flaws to start with something that might be "good enough."


EigenConcord?

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Doreen Kaundur
#2 - 2014-06-22 00:57:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Doreen Kaundur
Morality are just rules established at some point in civiization to help promote stability in said civilzation.
Often rules so old that they are deemed as being of divine origin.

Problem is, as generations come and go, the original reasons for these rules is forgotten and people assume they are outdated/relgiously biased/bigoted/ a violation of "rights" and such.

That is until such societies begin to develop the same social/psychological ills that prompted the morality code in the first place.

...and it goes round and round.

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Riyria Twinpeaks
Perkone
Caldari State
#3 - 2014-06-22 10:45:00 UTC
As with most instances where there are computed rankings and metrics, there's usually a simplification going on.

Things like the question "Should cooperating with an immoral individual be punished or merely give less/no benefit" are hard to find a general rule for, and you're bound to not adequately respect some special cases.
In many cases metrics also are an invitation to game the system, only fulfilling the letter, to get high rankings, instead of the spirit.

That said, rankings and metrics in general can be a good indicator where to look for something or to decide whether you need to investigate further in a certain situation.

However, as I understand the idea in the article (and I have to admit I merely skimmed it), this is something which ultimately could, and thus would, be used by people to measure the morality of other people. At least if it'd be implemented on a wide scale like in social networks or something like that.
That would be a problem, as people in general don't look further than the first piece of information, most of the time.

So if they are presented with a label which says a person is of low morality, they usually don't take this as indicator that one should be careful and take a closer look, but at face value.
I think that no matter how careful you are at designing a "morality computation", some people will be wrongly flagged as of low morality and others just as wrongly as of high morality. There might be only few instances of such, but as we are talking about humans being judged and possibly socially stigmatized, I think it's a dangerous thing.

As a Gedankenexperiment I find the idea interesting, though.
Grimpak
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2014-06-22 11:57:16 UTC
the concept of "morality", in itself, is highly subjective, thus nigh on impossible to classify.

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Bagrat Skalski
Koinuun Kotei
#5 - 2014-06-22 12:15:27 UTC  |  Edited by: Bagrat Skalski
For greater good we have to resort to lesser evil. Lol

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Ila Dace
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2014-06-22 12:58:59 UTC
The only correct measure of morality would be a perfect measure of a perfect standard, and only a perfectly moral entity could measure others by that standard, or be trusted with the measuring in the first place.

Or, from wisdom of a couple of thousand years ago... Judge not, lest ye be judged.

What hideous trouble we'd heap upon ourselves if we constructed and applied an absolute (which is not the same as perfect) measure against and imperfect standard, selected by the corruptible.

As Ryria says, though, an interesting thought experiment.

If House played Eve: http://i.imgur.com/y7ShT.jpg

But in purple, I'm stunning!
Ila Dace
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2014-06-22 12:59:46 UTC
Bagrat Skalski wrote:
For greater good we have to resort to lesser evil. Lol

Lol

If House played Eve: http://i.imgur.com/y7ShT.jpg

But in purple, I'm stunning!
Grimpak
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2014-06-22 13:42:30 UTC
Ila Dace wrote:
Bagrat Skalski wrote:
For greater good we have to resort to lesser evil. Lol

Lol

Lol


seriously tho, "amoral" people are actually the most coherent in this case, since the concept of "amorality" is actually quite objective.

that said tho, and how ingrained "morality" is in what we call "humanity", this makes people less... humane, and more "mechanical".



now this is a huge contradiction.Straight

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[quote]The more I know about humans, the more I love animals.[/quote] ain't that right