from the tough-question dept.
Sharad Bailur writes …I don't see the development in the forseeable future, of a system which is valid the world over, in which ethical standards which everybody agrees should be followed, are enforced. For instance how does one explain the millions of computer viruses floating around in the internet ether? If ethical standards cannot be enforced by some sort of international agreement, they will be followed more as an exception rather than as a rule. Besides, how does one enforce international agreements in the face of competing national sovereignties? We can at best by today's means isolate and blockade certain countries like Libya, Iraq and North Korea. In the face of a nanotech future these measures are surely hopelessly inadequate. How do we deal with this?" Read More for the full post. Sharad Bailur writes "With Foresight doing so much to discuss and promote ethical standards for a nanotech future, I am sure its engineers are constantly being reminded of what their ethics should be. Similarly most engineers do have ethical standards of sorts which they follow, not just in the US but elsewhere in the world as well. There is a computer game called "Win as much as you can" in which it is possible to train any ordinary computer to follow "patterns of behaviour" which encourage cooperation between computers rather than blind action on their part. Even if engineers were to be peculiarly bereft of any ethical sense on presumes that they would behave at least as well as those computers.
However, the problem is not with ethics. It is with its enforcement. I don't see the development in the forseeable future, of a system which is valid the world over, in which ethical standards which everybody agrees should be followed, are enforced. For instance how does one explain the millions of computer viruses floating around in the internet ether?
If ethical standards cannot be enforced by some sort of international agreement, they will be followed more as an exception rather than as a rule. Besides, how does one enforce international agreements in the face of competing national sovereignties? We can at best by today's means isolate and blockade certain countries like Libya, Iraq and North Korea. In the face of a nanotech future these measures are surely hopelessly inadequate. How do we deal with this?"
