The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Mon Aug 14, 2017 6:08 am

Crimson847 wrote: We haven't made any social progress at all in human history so teaching people things is pointless anyway.


Dammit, way to put "Agree with Doods" at the front end so that I would immediately thumb you before reading the rest of it. Vanity, my only weakness besides rampant alcoholism.

Anyways, that isn't exactly my argument. My argument is that you can observe right now how stubbornly ignorant people will remain in an era that allows unprecedented access to information. That same human nature is the reason that sending someone information back isn't going to persuade them at all. You can show people an ocean of data on global warming, and they'll find a way to be 'smarter' than all those scientists. Same concept; I doubt sending slavers back the memory of "12 Years a Slave" will make them go "You know what, maybe I'M the asshole."

Plus, I don't think we haven't made progress, but OP's argument implicitly suggests we're living some superior post-race utopia that we assuredly don't live in right now.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Mon Aug 14, 2017 8:14 am

cmsellers wrote:
Windy wrote:I have a personal thing for preserving history. The internet annoys me because it's a part of history now, but things get deleted and lost all the time.

http://www.archive.org


Archive.org deletes archived things arbitrarily. The guy deleting the thing can ask and the archive will be poofed out of existence. It's shit at preserving things tied directly to people or things people don't want archived. This is why people use archive.is and archive.fo, which are also under attack by DMCA abusing trolls at this point, so yeah, the internet's in pretty big danger of falling to pieces history-wise.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:42 pm

Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:
Crimson847 wrote: We haven't made any social progress at all in human history so teaching people things is pointless anyway.


Dammit, way to put "Agree with Doods" at the front end so that I would immediately thumb you before reading the rest of it. Vanity, my only weakness besides rampant alcoholism.


Image

Anyways, that isn't exactly my argument. My argument is that you can observe right now how stubbornly ignorant people will remain in an era that allows unprecedented access to information. That same human nature is the reason that sending someone information back isn't going to persuade them at all. You can show people an ocean of data on global warming, and they'll find a way to be 'smarter' than all those scientists. Same concept; I doubt sending slavers back the memory of "12 Years a Slave" will make them go "You know what, maybe I'M the asshole."

Plus, I don't think we haven't made progress, but OP's argument implicitly suggests we're living some superior post-race utopia that we assuredly don't live in right now.


If all you're arguing is that we haven't achieved perfection then I'm in agreement with that, but I don't see where the OP says or even implies that we have. All I see is an assertion that we've made substantial progress, and that advances in human knowledge and understanding bear at least some responsibility for that progress. Which seems to me like a reasonable claim that doesn't deserve the reception it's getting.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Mon Aug 14, 2017 5:09 pm

Crimson847 wrote:
Anyways, that isn't exactly my argument. My argument is that you can observe right now how stubbornly ignorant people will remain in an era that allows unprecedented access to information. That same human nature is the reason that sending someone information back isn't going to persuade them at all. You can show people an ocean of data on global warming, and they'll find a way to be 'smarter' than all those scientists. Same concept; I doubt sending slavers back the memory of "12 Years a Slave" will make them go "You know what, maybe I'M the asshole."

Plus, I don't think we haven't made progress, but OP's argument implicitly suggests we're living some superior post-race utopia that we assuredly don't live in right now.


If all you're arguing is that we haven't achieved perfection then I'm in agreement with that, but I don't see where the OP says or even implies that we have. All I see is an assertion that we've made substantial progress, and that advances in human knowledge and understanding bear at least some responsibility for that progress. Which seems to me like a reasonable claim that doesn't deserve the reception it's getting.


Well, because the premise of the argument inherently hinges on the idea that the data and things we've learned today would effectively end or fight back against prejudice, and I don't think *looks at Charlottesville* that's where we're at right now. In fact, one could--correctly I think--argue that prejudice has been increasing, not decreasing.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Marcuse » Mon Aug 14, 2017 5:22 pm

To respond to Crimson re the mind control thing, I'll direct us all to this:

Say that in some point in time, we develop a machine that can beam the information of today of milestones that happened later into the heads of people from the past would it be ethical?


That's from the OP, and it's all of why I think what is being proposed is mind control. We're not talking about educating people here. That's just saying what if we could overwrite people's minds to support the attitudes of today. Now, I'm not arguing that we haven't made some progress. What I'm suggesting is that while we think we're always making progress in the right direction, we don't always. Do we want to impart our knowledge of nuclear weapons on an unsuspecting past? I don't think so. Never mind that they wouldn't have the knowledge of what to do with it, it would cause hugely unpredictable consequences, and likely a lot of problems.

Say, for example, you're walking through your life, and you suddenly get mind melted by an ultra-vegan future world telling you all about how the microbes in your body are dying by the millions and how to live completely differently in order to avoid this. It also imparts their horror at this reality, saturated over several hundred years of considering this akin to genocide. I don't think this is an unfair reflection of the OP suggestion, but I can imagine that would be incredibly distressing for the people subjected (without consent) to it. We're suggesting to send our "scientific knowledge" of race back in time to make segregationists in the US give up their fight.

So what I'm suggesting isn't that we've not made progress, but that imparting our views on the past would be both dangerous and likely ineffective to boot. Due to how timey wimey stuff happens, if it were to happen it already has. I think it's extremely ethically shaky to force others to believe what we believe even if we think our way is better or more moral. It's not moral to commit immorality in order to propagate morality.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Aug 15, 2017 7:05 am

Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:Well, because the premise of the argument inherently hinges on the idea that the data and things we've learned today would effectively end or fight back against prejudice, and I don't think *looks at Charlottesville* that's where we're at right now. In fact, one could--correctly I think--argue that prejudice has been increasing, not decreasing.


This seems to contradict the notion that we've made progress on these issues. Now you're arguing that we've actually gone backwards since, say, the 1800s. Which is it?

Marcuse wrote:To respond to Crimson re the mind control thing, I'll direct us all to this:

Say that in some point in time, we develop a machine that can beam the information of today of milestones that happened later into the heads of people from the past would it be ethical?


That's from the OP, and it's all of why I think what is being proposed is mind control. We're not talking about educating people here. That's just saying what if we could overwrite people's minds to support the attitudes of today.


So what's the difference between "beaming" the knowledge of modern day scientific texts on race into people's heads as Eric suggests and, say, reading all that information to them? Other than speed and efficiency, naturally.

Do you remember how, in The Matrix, they could have information uploaded into their brains almost instantaneously, like when Tank runs a program that teaches Trinity how to pilot a helicopter in a fraction of a second? Was that "mind control" or just super-efficient teaching?

To my mind, "mind control" would involve more than just imparting information, regardless of the method. For instance, if Eric had suggested using a device that would give an electrical shock to the recipient every time they think a racist thought, or rewire their limbic system so they have a terror response every time they encounter racism, I would agree that would be coercive. However, what he appears to be suggesting is transferring information directly into a person's brain, rather like Tank did in The Matrix.

Moreover, he's pretty specific about what information would be imparted: namely, the knowledge of future social developments and modern scientific knowledge regarding race. I don't see him suggesting anywhere that all information available today would be transferred, including on subjects that are irrelevant to the goal of social comity like nuclear physics.


Finally, bringing up the physics of time travel isn't relevant. It's a hypothetical. You might as well answer the trolley problem by questioning why the track switch would be mechanical and accessible to the public in this day and age, or answer the alternate version by questioning whether throwing a fat person in front of a light train would actually stop it. The point of the question was not to debate physics, and given that you have a philosophy degree I kinda think you know that.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Tue Aug 15, 2017 9:21 am

Crimson847 wrote:
Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:Well, because the premise of the argument inherently hinges on the idea that the data and things we've learned today would effectively end or fight back against prejudice, and I don't think *looks at Charlottesville* that's where we're at right now. In fact, one could--correctly I think--argue that prejudice has been increasing, not decreasing.


This seems to contradict the notion that we've made progress on these issues. Now you're arguing that we've actually gone backwards since, say, the 1800s. Which is it?


Alright, I'm gonna try to lay out my argument about as clear as I can, because I think we're talking past each other a bit and I may not have been as articulate about my point as I could've been.

I didn't say we've gone backwards since the 1800s, but we've definitely gone back further than any time since...say...2001 (or more to the point, any year that I have solid political recollection of, I certainly wasn't paying attention when I was like...7).

But I think you're conflating my argument against OP's proposal with me thinking civil rights are no better than in the 1800s, I simply believe that sending a person in the 1800s our information wouldn't work because of human nature. I think advances in civil rights in this country have often been tied to other factors, knowledge among them but not enough alone to pull us forward: economics and the general well-being of white people, national unity, political gain/singular political figures (Lincoln, LBJ, MLK, etc), and most importantly generational shifts.

I think we progress forward mostly(and sometimes take a step back, but in the aggregate, we move forward) because a young generation replaces the one before it with slightly softer attitudes and mindsets. Of course, if you have a government where one person or group can hold onto a majority of the power for a very long time, you can drive a narrative across multiple generations, but that's just too hard to do in a country with so many competing factions and a government that changes hands so often.

You can wave as many charts as you want in your grandma's face, but I can promise that she still probably won't stop using racial slurs to describe black people. To me, the same holds with the 1800s. Sending some slaveowner something isn't gonna matter: they're already ingrained in their ways, and the generation below them isn't going to go from "Maybe this slave business is a little incongruous with the whole 'all men created equal' thing" to "Black Lives Matter".

So my argument is less about where we are right now and whether or not I think human nature would allow that to work. The reason I compared where we are now in my original post is that--again--I think Ashley's proposal hinges on the idea that we're always on a clear path forward, knowledge is the only reason we've moved forward, and that the knowledge we have now could effectively cure racism. My argument is that civil rights in this country has always been a lot more complex than simply education, and those other factors can sometimes drag us backwards.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Marcuse » Tue Aug 15, 2017 1:43 pm

So what's the difference between "beaming" the knowledge of modern day scientific texts on race into people's heads as Eric suggests and, say, reading all that information to them? Other than speed and efficiency, naturally.


One is introducing someone to information organically, in a way that doesn't harm their psyche. The other is overwriting their mind to suit someone else's whim.

Do you remember how, in The Matrix, they could have information uploaded into their brains almost instantaneously, like when Tank runs a program that teaches Trinity how to pilot a helicopter in a fraction of a second? Was that "mind control" or just super-efficient teaching?


That was mind control in an extremely limited form with consent from the subject. You'll note that when Morpheus wants to convince the leaders of Zion that Neo is the One he doesn't just download his opinion into their heads, he makes arguments to try to convince them to share his opinion. Technical information is one thing, things designed to change minds is another.

To my mind, "mind control" would involve more than just imparting information, regardless of the method. For instance, if Eric had suggested using a device that would give an electrical shock to the recipient every time they think a racist thought, or rewire their limbic system so they have a terror response every time they encounter racism, I would agree that would be coercive. However, what he appears to be suggesting is transferring information directly into a person's brain, rather like Tank did in The Matrix.


It is mind control though, it's taking person A with mindset 1 and turning them into person A with mindset 2. It radically alters that person's opinion on crucial issues that are still being addressed across the world and it does so without consent. My example of the future microbophiles is exactly the same, wouldn't you be distressed to have your view altered so you considered an aspect of your everyday life a hideous crime?

Moreover, he's pretty specific about what information would be imparted: namely, the knowledge of future social developments and modern scientific knowledge regarding race. I don't see him suggesting anywhere that all information available today would be transferred, including on subjects that are irrelevant to the goal of social comity like nuclear physics.


Briefly, I would suggest that science and technology is much less modular and more holistic than the example presumes, and without the social, political and cultural context it would have a hard time gaining traction without forcing itself upon minds. See Doods' argument re that.

Finally, bringing up the physics of time travel isn't relevant. It's a hypothetical. You might as well answer the trolley problem by questioning why the track switch would be mechanical and accessible to the public in this day and age, or answer the alternate version by questioning whether throwing a fat person in front of a light train would actually stop it. The point of the question was not to debate physics, and given that you have a philosophy degree I kinda think you know that.


I'm aware of that, but it irks me. I wrote one sentence on the subject.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby DanteHoratio » Wed Sep 13, 2017 12:16 am

Leave the past as it is.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby tinyrick » Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:10 am

I actually had an idea of a sci-fi scenario with a similar idea. Imagine if we preserved the DNA of several different peoples from around the world in case we destroyed ourselves and were hoping for some alien intelligence to revive us. They discover our DNA samples and do just that. The alien beings would not really be able to distinguish between African, European, Asian, etc. so they raise us all equally. We'd grow up knowing our skin, hair, eyes, etc. are different, so we'd be able to recognize race, but we'd be ignorant of history. The black person would not know of slavery and colonialism. The white person would not realize their own history of slavery and colonization. Asians wouldn't know they're supposed to hate other slightly different Asians.

They might become curious of humanity's history, and look it up, but upon discovering that white people used to enslave black people, or that Japanese people raped Nanking. They'd just be indifferent. The black person, who is ignorant of his own history, just wouldn't understand why he should feel animosity towards his white skinned comrade he's known all his life cause he's known friendship with the white guy longer than he's known this ugly history between them. He wouldn't even be able to understand the difference between being white and black, cause it wasn't even taught to him as a child. Likewise, the Japanese and Chinese person really wouldn't understand the hate either.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Grimstone » Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:08 am

Alien1: Gentlemen, behold!
Image

<humans almost immediately begin separating into groups and killing each other over petty differences>

Alien2: Uh, sir.. I think this species might be retarded..
Image
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