Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: mtuxo!ems1@att.att.com Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Synthetic consciences Message-ID: Date: 11 Aug 89 02:26:40 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 44 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article pmb@swituc.uucp (Pat Berry) writes: >> >day, just *might* be possible thru nanotechnology. The leading force >> >might use their time advantage to design an artificial conscience, >> >and apply it to *everyone*, to modify behavior. The artificial > >And who is going to play God and decide what my conscience is to consider >right and wrong? What if this decision-maker happens to admire Hitler? >(or any of an inumerable list of individual-specific "evils") > >No, leave me out of your mass conscience... I prefer to find my own way >to Nirvana. > >Pat Berry At the present time parents, and various other role models, play the major part in the initial shaping of a person's conscience. As we get older, we either take the responsibility for conscience shaping to ourselves or cede it to various religious or moral leaders. In the future, the leading force will inevitably have to make major ethical decisions (in your parlance "play god"), even if their decision is, "we're going to do nothing and let the first tyrant with a will to power take over". Perhaps the word "conscience" is loaded with too many other connotations. What I really described earlier would be a form of conditioned response to the use of nanotechnology. It should be no more obtrusive (into other areas of life) than automatically donning your seatbelt when you go driving. Why do computers have security systems? Why don't we just leave it up to everyone's conscience? The answer is that it takes just one immoral computer user to damage/destroy the system for everyone. To put it another way, your freedom is, (or should be) an inverse function of the population density. With the advent of true nanotechnology, I'll think we'll find the world is very small indeed. [ Well thats a big enough pile of "flammables" for now. Think I'll just hunker down into my nanotech heat-suit (with diamond fiber heat conductor channels). ] Ed Strong {princeton,attmail}!nanotech!ems