Week 3 Reading Response

CAN MORAL DISPUTES BE RESOLVED?

In this reading, the author poses the question: “So, which is it: right because God choose it, or chosen by God because right? Most people think it’s the latter.” The question led me to another question that I think complements it well: Did the moral and religious person gravitate toward religion because of their already established morality or did religion make the person moral? Having grown up in a religious background, I've seen my fair share of converts who gravitated toward religion initially because they felt like they'd reached a low point where they felt a complete breakdown in their ability to be moral and wanted to remedy it through religion. Like an army recruit during basic training, this type of convert is often characterized as a moral blank slate that is then instructed anew on morality through religious teachings. If morality is fluid and permits different - sometimes opposing - views depending on one's culture or religious affiliation, it's easy to see this type of convert align him/herself with the "right because [their] God chose it" camp. This type of convert can often be found in the "preconvention" phase of moral evolution. Another type of convert however is the type that picks up a few religious practices here and there out of admiration for its practitioners and gradually gravitates toward the active practice of said religion. This type of convert most likely would align his/herself with the "chosen by [their] God because right," camp, I think. This is typically the type of convert who 1) found validation in religious teachings for things they were already practicing on their own or as part of a non-religious subculture or 2)  converted from a previous religion that they'd perhaps been born into and had effectively been nurtured by. They'd fall into the convention or post-convention phase of moral evolution.

Breezing through the comments below the reading, it is interesting that a few commenters bring up the golden rule (do unto others...) as a solution for resolving cross-cultural moral disputes like honor killings. I found this to be pretty naive on their part. Someone even goes so far as to call it the "most universal moral/ethical principle," which I find false because even here in the Western world, we have many situations where it would be unwise to visit upon others the types of things we as unique individuals - with our separate tastes and tics and desires and quirks - wish to be done to us. Some people like being mistreated. Some people like being talked down to. Some like being objectified. Some like being mishandled. This is in no way a judgment on people for the things they like; just an illustration of how problematic that line of thinking can often be. The other thing about the golden rule is that it doesn't take into account the reasons people formulate in their heads for why they're really doing something to someone, why they feel like that something has to be done, and the "greater good" in their view that will ultimately result from the act.

WHY SELF-DRIVING CARS MUST BE PROGRAMMED TO KILL

I thought about similarities and differences between the trolley problem and the self-driving car having to choose between pedestrians in its path and its owner/passenger. It is interesting that in the few variations of the trolley problem I've read so far, the passengers inside the trolley are never in danger themselves of being killed or even mentioned at all. If such a variation exists and I just haven't read it yet, I stand corrected but back to my point. I'm making the comparison to bring up the issue of trust between man and machine and also to ask whether it would ever be ethical or even feasible to allow the human passenger of a self-driving car to be included in the decision-making process of choosing between mowing down a bunch of unsuspecting pedestrians or careening into the nearest wall. Unlike the AI aboard the self-driving car, the trolley operator's decision can easily be influenced by the passenger(s) through civil conversation or through mixed martial arts. I haven't read anything on the self-driving car's equivalent of a roundhouse kick to the trolley operator's face. Perhaps a manual override option in the self-driving car's settings could be included. People board a trolley expecting its operator to be 1) well-trained and 2) accountable for his decisions behind the wheel. However, in moments like the ones mentioned in the trolley problem, I also think people expect the trolley operator to 3) think and act a lot like his passengers would, were they in his shoes and 4) take his passengers' considerations into account. This is what builds trust between the operator and his/her passengers. I think one of the easiest ways designers of self-driving cars could get people to trust their products is to allow the passengers knowledge that they'd be able to influence the car's decision if ever faced with such a scenario. In the trolley, there's give and take to the amount of autonomy the trolley operator enjoys vs. the autonomy the passengers have. In the self-driving car, it seems to be all autonomy for the car, no autonomy for its passenger(s).

On a darker and more fear-mongering note, imagine a group of people bent of killing a single person and deciding the best way to do it would be to all at once run out in front of the person's self-driving car while he's inside it.

THE ROBOT'S DILEMMA

This was the most enjoyable read for me this week. I enjoyed the separation between the "machine-learning" approach and the "rule-based" approach to programming robots to make moral decisions and I definitely favor the "rule-based" approach. However, the reading got me thinking about one of my favorite sci-fi films in recent years - "Moon." In the film, the main character has a robot companion named GERTY who is very reminiscent of the AI HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey". In "Moon," GERTY has moral directives that have been programmed into it in service of its owner's nefarious plans. However, the main character essentially programs his own morality into GERTY simply through interactions with it over time and manipulation in a manner that is almost uniquely human. For an even better movie example of this method of overriding a robot's morality, see another movie titled "Robot and Frank."