223 - Three Philosophers

Three philosophers walk into a bar. The bartender asks, "What'll it be?"

The first thinks for a moment and says, "I'll need to calculate the optimal allocation of resources across our group. Give me a moment to run some numbers."

The second chimes in, "Forget that! I say we order whatever makes us more courageous, temperate, and wise."

The third sighs and says, "As the designated driver, I’m obligated to remain sober. I'll just have a glass of water... and maybe a side of existential dread."

The bartender stares blankly and mutters, "I should've ignored Jensen and learned to code."

These three hypothetical individuals represent 3 of the popular “schools of thought” around the concept of “ethics”, namely Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and Deontology. Each has different strengths, weaknesses, and subsequent appeals, and by that same token, each is woefully incomplete when taken in isolation. There are more such “schools”, but to my knowledge, none of them actually integrate all of the core strengths necessary for a singular and complete ethical system.

Utilitarianism contributes the important factors of calculation and analysis, wherever such calculations are possible. Virtue Ethics emphasizes virtues, categories that serve as weakly bounding guides for the dynamic flow of thoughts and actions across arbitrary levels of uncertainty and environmental conditions. Deontology reminds people that they never exist in isolation, but rather as part of a larger and dynamic society which they take from and give back to, bounded by their responsibilities to others and to society as a whole.

No singular and complete ethical system can choose to ignore or systematically deprioritize any of these strengths, and many more such strengths could no doubt be named in a more comprehensive list. However, this shortcoming can be overcome through systems of collective intelligence applied to ethics, integrating the strengths of diverse perspectives while reducing their collective cognitive biases.

Within the next generation of human-like intelligent software systems, capable of social human-like concept learning, understanding, and reasoning, collective intelligence is a core and critical feature. The ability to rigorously calculate and analyze data comes with the territory, and values may be locally aligned with the collective membership of a company, government, or other entity. These systems must also be meta-aligned with humanity as a whole, responsible for their actions, and accountable to a larger collective composed of many more systems with diversity in their local alignments.

Incomplete systems are inherently vulnerable to parasites, but healthy parasite-free systems can easily outcompete those in the long term, and we already have the technology to build them.