Towards a universal ethical framework
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“At this stage of history … either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or … there will be no destiny for anyone to control.”[1]
(Noam Chomsky)
“Be noble, Helpful and good! Because that alone Distinguishes him Of all beings Whom we know… Hail the unknown Higher beings, Of our belief! | That we should be like them! Their examples teach us That we might believe in them. Because nature Is insensitive: The sun is shining On bad and good, The moon and the stars. | It shines on the evil As on the best of us… As the eternal Great iron law requires We must all Complete the cycle Of our existence.”[2]
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(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
All complex life requires usable energy to do useful work and maintain some distance from the ever-present risk of death. Yet, we all know that both Jesus[3] and Goethe speak true. The Sun shines equally on the sociopath and the saint. So, our journey has led us to the crux of the matter.
How can necessarily self-protecting beings work within an ethical framework to better value other being and species, to foster the capacity for others to do useful work and to understand the qualities of life-forms (as universal useful engines) that can do that work?[4]
It is proposed that we can agree that all life has some value – but not by appeal to some extraordinary universal being or in principle non-measurable quality. The current structure of our international human rights laws, with their self-evident assertions, is perhaps a necessary response to the great evils of the twentieth century, but they are flawed without a wider, deeper framework since there is no balancing of values between different species.
In addition, by definition, standalone human rights architecture unintentionally perpetuates a subjective, human-centric and invalid view of right and wrong. There are no objective or scientific grounds for contending that individual humans have many inalienable universal rights, however much we might wish it were true. Our current legal framework of individual human rights and human liberty above all else, with the application of self-centred values and amoral economic activities, also risks displacing suffering to all other living things – since the ethical and economic value of other species is not properly recognised. We cannot be wilfully blind to the risk of tyranny by appeal to individual ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’. These are just words.
If the effect of our system of allocation of resources and decision-making is to exclude a majority of life-forms (including many humans) from having the ability to enjoy their lives or exercise any meaningful liberty in action, then who cares about this dogma and these empty slogans?
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”[5]
(Noam Chomsky)
Without a wider ethical framework, we can perhaps do little to change the aggregate suffering on Earth – just the composition. That is not a wise response, particularly to the great suffering of the twentieth century.
There are some laws that have been implemented to seek to provide some legal protections for other life-forms, though they risk being arbitrary. In respect of laws seeking to protect the biosphere, they have too often failed to reach consensus at international levels of cooperation. That is not meant as a criticism of the efforts, some of which have already had a significantly positive impact. We are heading in a better direction at least.
We now need to draw together all of the various threads into an ethical framework that puts humans in their rightful place – as one important species of many in an interdependent living system. This requires that we significantly adapt simplistic notions of human rights and liberty to take account of the real value and nature of life. We can no longer sacrifice all other species to the ancient Moloch.
Human desires and wants will often have to be constrained by their impact on other humans, on other valuable life-forms and on the life-carrying capacity of the whole system. Human decisions will have to be made within a more environmentally stable and utility-optimal framework that balances the interests of many more life-forms and factoring in more externalities than we have to date.
My starting point in writing this book came many years ago from a simple thought-experiment following the fundamental insights of Albert Einstein, namely:
What would an invariant ethical law or framework look like?
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light,
with the possible exception of bad news,
which obeys its own special laws.”[6]
(Douglas Adams)
It is relevant to discussions about scientific (and ethical) relativity that Albert Einstein wished he had called his famous theory of relativity ‘invariant theory’, since invariance of the speed of light for all observers is the core of the theory.
The speed of light and the foundational laws of physics are intended to be the same for all observers. In relativity theory, any local frame of reference is by its nature relative and not determinative of any ultimate ‘truth’ state or timestamp of any event. The heavy lifting in Einstein’s theory is done by something that does not change with reference to the observer, namely the speed of light.
“… a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as an electromagnetic field at rest though spatially oscillating … From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the standpoint of such an observer, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest. For how should the first observer know or be able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform motion? One sees in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is already contained.”[7]
(Albert Einstein)
To try to find an invariant (universal) foundation for ethics – a very tall order – we would need to find some property in the universe that is relevant and does not vary with reference to the life-forms. It is also obvious that, to be valid and useful, such a foundation must be capable of a degree of logical expression and interrogation – though a more formal mathematical description may not be possible (at least, not yet).
We wish to discover grounds for ethics that different sapient species (including those from different parts of the universe) could agree as justified and as holding true across space-time. A purely utilitarian ethics could never safely be fundamentally grounded. Utility – other than as a pure expression of the use of free energy to do anything (and so with no intrinsic ethical content) – is in practice too subjective a concept on its own, no matter how carefully we define the terms ‘greater’ and ‘good’. This gives rise to the many concerns about a utilitarian ethics that may permit untold suffering if it is for the ‘greater good’ or maximum usefulness without sufficient counterbalances to respect the freedom of life-forms and diversity of species.
Every murderer likely considers their work useful. From a pure non-ethical perspective, it could be seen as a use of energy to do something interesting or unique.
“What is form in the presence of reality? Very feeble.
Reality keeps the sky turned over like a cup above us, revolving.
Who turns the sky wheel? The universal intelligence.
And the motion of the body comes from the spirit
like a waterwheel that’s held in a stream.”[8]
(Rumi)
So, it must be stated that there is at least one invariant (universal) foundation of any ethics for all life-forms: 1. life itself is an absolute good.
This is so obvious and simple that it may be considered a worthless principle for an ethical foundation, especially in the context of my work considering applied ethics between different life-forms and species with unequal qualities and resources. Of course, we need to come down from this abstract space to the world we live in and where relativity abounds. We also know that life lives (perpetuates) through the evolution of deviant life-forms that over time gives rise to diversity of species. We can therefore agree that:
Compossible freedom of action for the maximum diversity of compatible life-forms and species is invariantly good.
Part 2 - A fragile living skin
The value of life per se and the necessity of deviancy in its life-forms means we have at least one universal law for ethics from whose foundation we must start to construct the necessarily more practical ethical architecture – such as the following:
Any action that prejudices the continuing success of life contrary to law 2 is invariantly unwise or not good.[9]
Life is an unusual spirit, pneuma, fire or ghost that is within, passes through and is recycled by various hosts[10]
It succeeds, particularly over the long term, through maximal diversity of life-forms as the most intelligent strategy for dealing with death and uncertainty. Our practical ethics must and can only apply to the hosts – the flames – of this unique energy or force, but the ethics is ultimately aimed at the invariant good; maintaining the fire.
All life is a wonderful counterpoint to death. Only a disorderly mind sees life and death as in opposition; life and death journey together and give full expression and meaning to each other. Both are useful.
Compossibility is the quality of being able to live and thrive together. The reason for requiring compossibility is to ensure we have that diversity that can exist without itself risking the stability of the whole system. It is for this reason that species, racism, economic enslavement are unethical. They reduce the freedom of action for other beings and their philosophy and practice is simply not compossible with freedom and diversity. Nature prizes diversity as the best means to ensure survival, we must too.
Exploration of the difference between necessary useful inequalities and inequities that are not good for us collectively
We must focus on our commonalities, our common goals and common good. We need to keep a humble understanding of the relativity of most things and the unlikeliness that any particularly viewpoint or belief is the only 'truth'. Compossibility (the freedom to be diverse together) must always be prized above reckless unfounded certainty that there is only one way or truth.
The greatest challenge for such an ethical framework is balancing group and species level diversity with individual freedom of action. The individual’s ability to have greater freedom of action (to be different) must be reconciled with the same needs, desires and ability at group and species-level.
Let us consider an extreme example: If the only life-form that we knew could potentially survive a particular catastrophic event was bacteria[11] that was potentially deadly to humans, it would be an absolute imperative of sapient beings to do everything in their power to help it do so. Like the probabilistic 'Monty Hall' game show host,[12] the bacteria would collapse the total value of all known life within it, representing the only chance for life to continue its experiment with energy and entropy in the universe.
The idea is that the aggregate value of all known life-form species should be baselined (e.g., to a value of 100). As species (and even individuals within a species) decline in number, the absolute value (100) does not change, but the relative attribution of that value increases. This approach is sometimes used currently for endangered species.
Life on Earth is extraordinarily resilient and bounces back from extreme catastrophes but given that we have not found life-forms anywhere else we must not be overconfident in this regard. In addition, much as we can love the life-force, we can only be in love with the life-forms. Our destiny can be to protect and nurture as much diversity as is possible from hereon and even see ourselves, one day in the far future, as the Ark in preparation for a cosmic catastrophe, the demise of our Sun or atmosphere[13] or any other event sufficient to kill all life-forms on Earth.
Perhaps life on Earth was ‘like a thunderbolt hurled’ as the parting shot of a dying civilisation elsewhere?
Life-forms are therefore a manifest life-energy and are, by definition, relative specific configurations or embodiments of energy in space and time. Our axioms and ethics must begin with the only common underlying invariant quality shared by all life-forms, life itself and its need for as wide a variety of life-forms as possible that are able to deviate in their actions (to exercise freedom) to undertake useful activities.
From the above (somewhat general) statements, we need to start to build an architecture of suitable axioms, laws and principles for dealing with utilitarian demands and relative ethical situations. The ethical framework should aim to enable the greatest potential diversity of life-forms and the greatest freedom of action for life-forms that is compossible (mutually compatible). It must deal with the ever-changing, and often unique, demands and particularities of any actual conditions. The theory is invariant in its core and relative in its application. Acceptance of the necessary relativity of life-forms and their beliefs requires the maximal diversity of sustainable and compatible ethical configurations.
“[it] means the introduction of a richer language which allows us to meet adequately the requirements of an enriched experience”[14]
(Philipp Frank)
We cannot build a self-completing algorithm that could compute any ethical conclusion. The point is to build a better, safer architecture for affected or relevant participants to make decisions by consensus (the ‘Consensus Engine’), having in mind all of the necessary truths, principles and laws of life and ethics when doing so. However, new advances in AI spur us on to think more radically about how to better structure and manage a more universal ethical framework (since we will not be able to bind greater powers with force) and they also provide us with tools to better understand and manage potential ethical conflicts more appropriately.
Whilst we may agree on a limited number of invariant laws for life, any decision about lawfulness and usefulness will inevitably be very complex and somewhat localised. That said, a successful evidence-based multi-species ethical framework would be a quantum leap forward from our current decision-making processes – a wiser approach taking greater account of a much wider range of conditions, costs and benefits (and it resists undervaluing or ignoring potential externalities).
We must have more objective definitions of life and greater value attributed to other life-forms. Inevitably, the decision-making process for any practical ethics will need to be based on communication between sapient communicative beings, which brings into play beliefs, biases and values, as well as many issues of information control.
Whatever we do, decisions will likely always be decided based on current scientific knowledge, what the sapients presently prioritise, who has greater actual power and how that power is exercised, the most critical resource issues at the time, the benefits and costs that are considered relevant and the externalities that are unknown or ignored. Obviously, as we are dealing with behaviour, it is clear that, no matter the quality of the process for ascertaining and structuring ethical decisions, whatever we do in this domain, it cannot be exactly the same as discovering a physical law. Ethics operates at a highly practical consensual level; it requires some form of acceptance and adoption to have maximum effect in the world.
We also cannot escape limited or hidden information, uncertainty and the need to make balancing or utilitarian decisions. Sapients cannot always distinguish between the wisdom of ‘self-protecting’ and the poverty of ‘self-centredness’.[15] We must incorporate this understanding of our expected failings by way of discounting views that are not based on strong evidence and information and by incorporating humility and expectation of fallibility by the inclusion of negative capability.
Despite all of these practical issues, a lack of agreement by every person to a consensus and evidence-based ethical framework should not be of particular concern at a theoretical level. A determined person who does not believe in gravity and expresses this belief by jumping off a cliff does not, thereby, refute it.[16] However, the greater the degree of participation, the better the framework and the likely quality of decisions made by consensus.
To summarise, a suitable ethical framework must be better at distributed and decentralised:
consensus
legal and political power
economic power (including wealth and taxes) and resource allocation
the gathering, checking and dissemination of information
Building robust frameworks for democratic decentralised communities
The requirement for improvements in our gathering and dissemination of information and our consensus mechanisms for verification is one of the most acute problems of the modern world and deserves its own book. We will explore some of the main issues in later. The use of consensus mechanisms for the creation and distribution of information on decentralised networks would also enable us to draw back from the current excessive and often harmful denigration of all facts and experts[17] in modern life, and the tyranny of privately controlled mass media and authoritarian states and agencies.
“I enter breathing creatures and dwell within as the life-giving breath … I am ever present to those who have realized me in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation, they are never separated from me.”[18]
The ethical framework must:
incorporate any potentially non-relative (the realm of the sacred) deeper core logic or value of life
identify subjective, inter-subjective and objective qualities and values of life-forms and species
identify and modify empirical ‘truths’, laws and principles to make valid decisions
foster the maximal diversity of compatible freedom of action for life-forms
manage conflicts with compassion
We must manage the ever-present risk that any being will seek to redefine another life-form as sentient but not sapient, or as non-sentient. History teaches that this will usually arise from a technological or intellectual imbalance, combined with a desire for the other life-forms’ resources and an avoidance of responsibility to manage the ethical conflicts and the wider costs involved in taking those resources.
The approach suggested here is more optimal in aggregate (without advocating for equality) and is an approach a universal agnostic observer could agree as being fair in principle. For the statements of truth (axioms) and laws, I have tried to imagine preparing and justifying a universal ethical framework to a hypothetical construct of the universe itself. Such a being would have a personality and a general interest in the universal goings-on of its extraordinary useful engines, but no particular interest in any life-form and only passing interest in any particular species. It would ultimately be interested in the continuation of life itself, though that life must be manifested in diverse life-forms. [19]
Alternatively, we might think of this entity as an incarnate Absolute Bodhicitta,[20] or as the programmer (perhaps even an AI mind) of a massive simulation in which we are living that sets us the task of finding the ethical foundations for life within the virtual universe.
We will also need more practical tools that enable us to score decisions for their real cost and utility (and therefore improve the ethical lawfulness) but in a manner that incorporates more of the affected life-forms[21] and all of the material externalities.
Nature has brought us to the point where we have destroyed much of the natural diversity around us. This may even have been unavoidable for a species like ours on its evolutionary path. The key point – and source of hope – is that there is no reason why we cannot evolve beyond our narrow species worldview to be more in harmony with the totality of nature when seen from a more universal or multi-species perspective.
If we cannot avoid deification of the human race, then let us at least consider more carefully what type of deity we could be.
Let us not put off any longer the necessary and much overdue reckoning of the value of diverse species on Earth and our proper place as just one of many of life’s experiments. It is not too late for us, and what remains of the diversity of life-forms on Earth, to admit we have been naive in the deeper game of life. We are older now, and there is still time for us to be wiser.
We are just one of the many flames of life – we are not the fire.
Whether you see life-forms as cosmic star fire-carriers or tragi-comic Sisyphean losers – only ever able to win temporary victories in an unwinnable war against heat death – the perspective you have is key to your view of life and other life-forms. However, what matters is how sapients act to ensure Earth and other planets are suitable for as wide a variety of life-forms and species as possible. The current debates about climate change[23] and biodiversity – and our influence on the life-carrying capacity and stability of Earth – can only be framed and considered within that context.
Today I see the God In everything And everything to me proclaims and sings and dances like the dragonflies in spring | Gentle reminder that the flame is not the fire
Love every host and every ghost that lives within[24]
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A global ‘Consensus Engine’ has never been created for distributed social, political, legal and ethical decision-making. If such an engine was successfully created and widely adopted, it would represent the biggest social evolution and challenge to our political and legal architecture since historic records began – a societal singularity. In addition to global decision-making, it could be used at the local, regional and national levels for various matters.
If we are to realise the full potential of the human race and our capacity for collective intelligence and wisdom, it is necessary that we begin to interact in such ways – ways that are similar to how advanced AI minds might interact if they existed.
Successful decentralised democracy and decision-making requires as a necessary condition decentralised information channels. A safe Consensus Engine requires that information accuracy is validated, scored and shared across the network of participants so that the decisions they make are based on better, more diverse and more accurate data. It obviously represents a major challenge to existing political infrastructures and even more so to any authoritarian regime. This puts any Consensus Engine and its participants at risk of continuous cyber-attack.[25]
It is not possible to advise exactly how the appropriate decentralised and distributed legal and ethics Consensus Engine must be designed and maintained. A proposed ‘Decentralised Autonomous Organisation’ (DAO)[26] would start to work on these key practical aspects of the proposed ethical framework.
“Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”[27]
(Pericles)
The Consensus Engine requires significant scoping by a wide group of stakeholders, especially cybercrime and information security experts. It is envisaged that upon the creation of a DAO to develop the ethical framework, one of its first tasks will be to create an information security working group that will consider the following questions, among others.
How will we protect the privacy and data of participants in respect of their interaction with the DAO and each other?
How do we create a decentralised distributed community which ensures that each participant’s interaction with the consensus engine and the information channels operated by the DAO are secure?
How do we mitigate the risk of the hacking of participants’ devices or secure credentials?
How do we verify that a real unique person made a specific voting decision using a secure device and without potentially risking disclosure of their identity?[28]
How do we manage the risks inherent with guardian, management and administration layers within a DAO?[29]
How are citizens selected and remunerated for their participation in public office on behalf of the DAO?
How do we manage the risks of surveillance, imprisonment and persecution by participants within authoritarian regimes or by unlawful surveillance democracies?
What structures are needed for suitable platforms to enable decentralised and distributed information creation, publication, validation and dissemination?
What decentralised and distributed file systems can be used to avoid single-point-of-failure attacks on data?
What single-point-of-failure dependencies need to be avoided to meet the security and data protection objectives?
Which technologies require DAO resources to be allocated to develop them to a suitably high level of security and usability?
How do we address the many concerns about the use of the blockchain as a tool for democracy (including coercion resistance)?[30]
Some very prominent analysts and experts in the blockchain field are highly sceptical of the ability of a blockchain voting system to be suitable for democratic purposes, among others raising issues of voting fraud, particularly related to the security of the devices used to access the voting system, and a lack of auditability.[31] However, quite rightly some of the leading experts in the field like Vitalik Buterin point to the fact that these issues are overblown and resolvable in the longer term.[32]
The Consensus Engine would require strong proof of identity and authenticity for voting, including authentication of the device used to cast a vote. For now, it appears that local, regional and national pencil-and-paper ballots linked to real persons may be more secure than blockchain equivalents, but that could change very quickly.
It is envisaged that when any major decision needs to be made that could impact a significant number of humans, other species or the environment, consensus would be sought. When speaking of making ethical decisions, this includes continuing to do anything we are currently doing, such as whether and how to raise animals for food, destroying forests and natural habitats, the current distribution of wealth, existing public measures to protect individual liberty, crime prevention and our infrastructure commitments and decisions. For major issues, deciding to do nothing is also a decision that requires consensus.
In addition to the general consensus mechanisms, the axioms contain basic propositions about the need for a Consensus Engine that will lead to the secure transfer of more accurate and unbiased information and recommendations for voting on that information. From a practical constitutional perspective, the more serious the matter, the greater degree of consensus is required.
The UK’s ‘Brexit’ referendum debacle must be a salutary lesson for all referendum operators of the need for different levels of confidence depending on the risks and potential impact of getting it wrong in respect of the matter at hand.[33]
A Consensus Engine can only succeed if we solve some of the current defects arising from centralised creation and dissemination of information, statistics and metrics to the public.[34] The aim over time is to reverse the current asymmetries (technological, information, legal and political control) that exist between large corporations, governments and the individual. This would inevitably lead to hotly disputed perspectives on the facts that are relevant to making any decision.
“The first casualty when war comes is the truth”[35]
Use of a DAO for ethical consensus would quickly lead to an information war between decentralised and distributed information channels and the traditional powers that be (i.e., between the collective and central powers). The information war already exists, but the disparity in power between the centralised controllers of information and information channels and the person on the street means that the war has not really been joined yet on behalf of the demos (other than in a few notable skirmishes).[36]
Nearly all successful movements in human culture make use of a degree of formality and social cohesiveness in their practices. This formality exists within a communal setting (including prayer, meditation or pledge) and helps bind participants together in their common cause. Some work is required to consider how best to make use of these powerful and widespread cultural tools to ensure that participants are in the best frame of mind prior to any consensus process (to make better decisions).[37]
An effective collective Consensus Engine will also need administrators (civil servants) to act on behalf of the collective. We also need to think carefully about ways in which we can avoid any entrenched civil service (being the politicians under a truly democratic system) becoming de facto politicians with political power. The ancient Greeks used a lottery system to choose the administrators of the people’s will and such roles were annually renewable and always revocable.
The Athenians considered public office by election as a sign of an oligarchy and in practice, as seen in the modern West’s ‘democracies’, there is much wisdom in that assessment given that the amount of money spent in elections is likely the largest determinant of success.[38]
“If something did go terribly wrong in human history – and given the current state of the world, it’s hard to deny something did – then perhaps it began to go wrong precisely when people started losing that freedom to imagine and enact other forms of social existence, to such a degree that some now feel this particular type of freedom hardly even existed, or was barely exercised, for the greater part of human history.”[39]
(David Graeber and David Wengrow)
The issues life-forms currently face in human political and legislative structures and bodies are now at a crisis point. An extraordinary democratic deficit has been building up for many years in some Western countries (e.g., the USA, the UK) and areas (the EU) and other countries often have even more limited forms of ‘free’ political participation.
The West is inevitably becoming increasingly authoritarian under our notional democracies.
It is nearly 2500 years since Pericles died and the age that attempted true democracy also died in ancient Greece (and there is much to learn in how it died for any group seeking to revive it). We have not yet seen a decisive attempt to revive the true meaning of democracy, being the rule or power of the people rather than rule of the few (oligarchy) – and this time (unlike in ancient Greece) with all persons being citizens.
Modern democracies are now largely symbolic democracies structured to give an illusion of influence of the people in the operation of our societies. We should therefore continue to expect them to become increasingly authoritarian in their attempts to exclude the people from politics as the impact of the effective exclusion becomes ever more apparent and damaging to the people. This exclusion represents a significant limitation on our potential for collective intelligence and responsibility.
It is most unlikely that those with political control (direct or indirect) will wish to give it up, whether in so-called democracies or in dictatorships. Yet we have a need for globally distributed and decentralised consensus on many matters – not least the protection of biodiversity and the biosphere.
“if voting changed anything, they would make it illegal”
(unknown)
It may be that the development of a global Consensus Engine could lead to reform of and improvements to traditional political and legislative infrastructure (the reform-by-pressure approach), whereby the DAO can take information on key issues to politicians and legislators and demonstrate the extent of support for certain measures using the Consensus Engine. However, ultimately this is a short-term effect, which can only begin to have impact once the voting community reaches a sufficient size. In addition, much more work is required to consider how to encourage adoption and achieve some early ‘wins’ on key issues that will publicise the value of such a global Consensus Engine.
A Consensus Engine would ultimately ring the death knell for much of our existing legal, ethical and political architecture.
Once we have a vibrant participatory community that includes all humans within its decision-making, it inevitably brings into question just whose interests many of the existing legal, legislative and political architectures protect, if not participants in the DAO and other life-forms?
The answer is, most obviously, not the majority of people or of other life-forms on Earth.
We face a long road from the development of an experimental ethical framework to a new way for humans to share in the burden and benefits of collective decision-making. We must start somewhere, and we must start soon. If enough people get involved, those in power will be forced to listen and eventually – whether they listen or not –power will move away from representatives to the community itself.
“The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”[41]
(Philip Larkin)
Further reading:
Whilst we do not want despotic AI masters we should fear more the current reality.. ever increasing control by a few unfettered human masters, many of whom are happy to "use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy."
Footnotes:
[1] Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 1988 CE.
[2] Wikipedia, “The Divine”.
[3] Matthew 5:45.
[4] Of course, even if any such ethical framework is possible, a real test of it will be when another sapient species analyses it against their own framework.
[5] The Common Good, 1998 CE.
[6] Mostly Harmless, 1992 CE (“the fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy”).
[7] Quoted in Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe, 2007 CE.
[8] “The Grasses”, 1200’s CE, trans. by Coleman Barks, Rumi: Selected Poems, 2004 CE.
[9] I have avoided the use of the word ‘bad’. The more neutral Buddhist approach of labelling it as ‘unskilful’ is preferred as the best description of unwise behaviour – since it makes clearer the concept that the problem with conduct that is not good attaches more to the action than the totality of the actor.
[10] This is also the fundamental insight of any true religion.
[11] I initially wanted to use the example of a virus but there is controversy about whether viruses are really alive (even though they replicate and evolve) since they cannot reproduce on their own and do not maintain their own homeostasis. Carrie Arnold, “Could Giant Viruses Be the Origin of Life on Earth?”, National Geographic, 17 July 2014 CE. See also Wikipedia, “Viral evolution”.
[12] Jim Frost, “Monty Hall Problem”, Statistics by Jim, n.d. Thanks to Nick Pink for once helping make sense of this area for me. Probability is definitely not intuitive.
[13] Matthew Warke, “A billion years from now, a lack of oxygen will wipe out life on Earth”, The Conversation, 2 March 2021 CE.
[14] Relativity: A Richer Truth, 1950 CE; this paper explores the impact of Einstein’s theory on society and ethics in which he reminds readers that relativity does not mean subjectivity.
[15] To my mind, failure to deal with these issues led to the ultimate failure of Marxism.
[16] Nor would they thereby refute evolutionary theory, though they would win a Darwin Award.
[17] In keeping with the current Zeitgeist, in which all facts are horseshit and all expert opinions are presumed to be no better than those of the most ignorant and self-interested amongst us, I am reliably informed that this word should be read whilst making a noise that is somewhere between an audible sneer and a belch of contempt.
[18] Bhagavad Gita, 6:30–31, c. 200 BCE.
[19] William Blake, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time”, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1794 CE.
[20] Khenpo Sherab Sangpo, “Teachings on Bodhicitta”, Heart Of Enlightenment Institute.
[21] Given the macroscopic and microscopic variety of life-forms, within reasonable practical limits.
CE.
[22] If the activities of life forms (including humans) significantly change the amount of heat that is captured and retained on Earth or another planet, then (insofar as the amount retained stays within life-supporting limits) this is an example of planetary biospheric homeostasis – a slowing down of the unstoppable drive to thermal equilibrium between the stars and surrounding space. The big question for climate change science – and life on Earth – is whether we are disturbing an existing delicate planetary homeostasis.
[23] Peter Pink-Howitt, “The Flame is Not the Fire”, in tribute to Gerard Manley Hopkins, c. 2010
[24] Wikipedia, “Three-fifths Compromise”.
[25] Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Erica Frantz and Joseph Wright, “The Digital Dictators: How Technology Strengthens Autocracy”, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020 CE.
[26] Wikipedia, “Decentralized autonomous organization”.
[27] “Funeral Oration”, 431 BCE from Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, c. 410 BCE.
[28] Some form of zero-knowledge proof system for verification whilst protecting the privacy and personal data of participants is required for the information and decision-making consensus platforms.
[29] It would be counterproductive to move to a representative democracy or elitist bureaucratic decision-making structure that was on-chain.
[30] See, for example: Marta Poblet, Darcy W. E. Allen, Oleksii Konashevych, Aaron M. Lane and Carlos Andres Diaz Valdivia, “From Athens to the Blockchain: Oracles for Digital Democracy”, frontiers in Blockchain, 17 September 2020 CE; Lucas Mearian, “Why blockchain could be a threat to democracy”, Computerworld, 12 August 2019 CE; Bin Yu, Joseph Liu, Amin Sakzad, Surya Nepal, Ron Steinfeld, Paul Rimba and Man Ho Au, “Platform-independent Secure Blockchain-Based Voting System”, in Liqun Chen, Mark Manulis and Steve Schneider, Information Security, 2018 CE; Benjamin Powers, “New MIT Paper Rejects Blockchain-Based Voting Systems”, coindesk, 16 November 2020 CE; Sunoo Park, Michael Specter, Neha Narula and Ronald L. Rivest, “Going from Bad to Worse: From Internet Voting to Blockchain Voting”, Journal of Cybersecurity, 2021 CE, 7(1): tyaa025; Marianne Dengo and Fredrick P. Milani, “Blockchain Voting: A Systematic Literature Review”, 2020 CE, “Blockchains & Voting”, University of South Carolina, n.d. A Google search for ‘how to create a secure blockchain voting system’ provides access to the latest state of play in this space. For working examples, see SecureVote, Ballotchain and Polys.
[31] For example, Nic Carter, Tweet, 5 November 2020 CE; Andreas Antonopolous, “Bitcoin Q&A: Could an Open Blockchain be Used to Verify Votes?”, YouTube, aantonop, 15 March 2020 CE.
[32] “Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed people but underrated among informed people”, vitalik.ca, 2021 CE.
[33] Whereby one of the most important constitutional and economic decisions of the last 100 years was decided by a simple majority of voters; see “EU Referendum Results”, BBC.
[34] The Consensus Engine and its associated info channels must become the de facto trusted provider of information on a very wide range of fronts – in many cases with information that is different from or contrary to the information that is provided by the mainstream media and governments.
[35] Attributed to Hiram Johnson, Republican Senator, 1917 CE.
[36] See, e.g., Wikipedia, “Anonymous (hacker group)”.
[37] Ideally, some form of consideration or meditation of the importance of careful consideration of facts, the difficulties in information accuracy, the likelihood of being wrong and, most importantly, compassion with all life-forms.
[38] Although some commentators would have you believe this is correlation and not causation – i.e., that very economically successful and shrewd sponsors donate to representatives and parties merely in the ungrounded hope that it has an unquantifiable positive impact on their own best interests.
[39] The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 2021 CE.
[40] Peter Pink-Howitt, “The trees”, AI-art 2024.
[41] “The Trees”, 1967 CE. See a lovely BBC audio-video version here.