Why Sentience Matters — Disputing the Right to Cruelty

Why Sentience Matters — Disputing the Right to Cruelty

This blog is interested in sentience — the ability to go beyond original programming, OP (in this case human OP). Not only is it of great interest whether or not humans can go beyond simple robots but, as it turns out, sentience is THE political concern of our times.

Believers in pure non-sentient human original programming have an argument that goes like this:

1. Humans are chained to OP
2. Human OP dictates cruelty — its in our nature
3. Governments must serve the greatest good
4. The greatest good cannot be found by denying human nature
5. Therefore governments must allow some level of human cruelty

This argument is usually hidden in “tough on crime” rhetoric — especially when the crime is in response to egregious inequality. The state can’t go after the inequality because “property rights” IE the right to be cruel so it must go after the poor.

Full sentience, in which the programming of culture and memory overlay instructions on OP, cuts down this argument at its root 1. — humans are NOT chained to OP.

However every software engineer is aware of a second, lesser, way to modify a program called flags. A flag is a toggle in a program that can change its output from X to Y. Configuration flags are so popular in computer science that their are entire companies that just allow viewing and changing their runtime values.

Of course genetic programming, the greatest and most sophisticated programming of all, employs lots of flags. Genes can be turned off and on by epigenetic changes and that’s just one example of human configuration flags.

This lesser sentience, the application of culture / memory, to modify human behavior is at the heart of our political debates because it threatens the above argument at 2.

That there might be flags that culture can activate in the human psyche to lessen “othering” and cruelty is a full on obsession of conservative thought:

Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.

Before Peterson there was Pegler coining “bleeding heart” liberal in his stance against a bill that would create penalties for lynching:

I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year.

The lynchings must continue because what if there is a sentient flag that when activated causes humans to be less tolerant of cruelty. And of course there are studies and Ted Talks which argue such flags exist.

If such flags exist then the argument above is turned on its head:

1. Humans are chained to OP
2. Human OP can dictate cruelty or kindness — it’s determined by culture
3. Governments must serve the greatest good
4. The greatest good can be found by controlling human nature
5. Therefore governments must seek to activate sentient flags that reduce othering and cruelty

For instance if you are concerned with drug use and believe human nature can be controlled then as Nixon did you reduce sentences and increase drug treatment programs. If you don’t believe human nature can be altered then you try to lock all drug users up but especially any group you don’t like as your nature can’t be controlled either.

But more importantly for a conservative some policies might be in place simply to push the population towards a mindset of cruelty.

What if forcing massive student debt reprograms young people to be less forgiving and charitable?

Not just in a tit for tat I was in debt so others must be also but in a full on sentient flag to encourage dark triad traits like viewing other humans purely in terms of return on investment.

If we accept that government is not just controlling ordinary policy but also altering who we are as humans, then democracy becomes a much more complex machine of feedback loops.

For instance both arguments above include “Governments must serve the greatest good”. Strictly speaking though a democracy serves some majority percentage and if governments can control some or all of the opinions of that majority then there is no real “serve” anymore.

This creates a new argument for cruelty that we must consider:

1. Humans are chained to OP
2. Human OP can dictate cruelty or kindness — it’s determined by the government
3. Governments must stay neutral rather than control the programming of their citizens
4. Therefore “freedom” dictates government neutrality and neutrality causes cruelty.

This is where again using full sentience to attack 1. is preferred. If culture can break our OP chains then the rest of this argument unravels.

However again even without full sentience this argument can be attacked at point 3. Government neutrality is only possible in the absence of cruelty induced dystopia and slavery, war and various forms of environmental collapse are all already out there as examples.