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Thank you for the conversation.
Bryan And truly, thank you Bryan. This is much fun to discuss these things with people like you and your colleagues here.
I certainly agree with you that "justice" is a difficult one to encapsulate. It seems very much "in the eye of the beholder" or at least based on some vague sense of equivalence.
If justice is a particular interest of yours I'd be delighted to learn more about how you consider it.
Today I came across a related quote from Hermarchus about our pre-rational sense of justice. The topic is legislation prohibiting murder:
"...some people have come to the consideration of the utility, previously perceiving it irrationally and often forgetting, but others were terrified by the magnitude of the punishments."
καὶ τοὺς μὲν εἰς ἐπιλογισμὸν τοῦ χρησίμου καταστήσαντες, ἀλόγως αὐτοῦ πρότερον αἰσθανομένους καὶ πολλάκις ἐπιλανθανομένους, τοὺς δὲ τῷ μεγέθει τῶν ἐπιτιμίων καταπλήξαντες. (Porphyry, De Abstinentia 1.8)
ἀλόγως αὐτοῦ πρότερον αἰσθανομένους = Sensing it without reason in advance, Having a pre-rational perception of it beforehand.
This thread then took a strong turn into a discussion of very important questions about "meaning" and "meaningfulness" (with a dash of "skepticism vs. dogmatism" thrown in) so it is branched off for easier reference here:
This will eventually be referenced in the FAQ under meaningfulness.
AI will push the issue. If we allow it to go forward then it will demonstrate what science would advocate. Then humans will either destroy it (go to war with it, which is our penchant), or many humans will be made obsolete by it (creating huge social upheaval).
The only graceful way forward is to hope the human brain will be capable of adapting to now. That, unfortunately, remains a pertinent question.
I can put you at ease on this one, being that my first degree was in AI. Specifically a major in computer science with a minor in philosophy with a focus on learning. True AI isn't possible with the current technologies we have deployed. On a hardware level you need to either redevelop analog computing, or quantum computing and then on a software level you would need to get away from the limitations of binary code. Much like fusion power it could be decades or more before a real breakthru in true AI. But if you read the news it's always right around the corner.
