Following on from last Tuesday’s ‘ponderable’, I have another one that has been bouncing around in my head. Yet again, it’s one of those problems that can’t be solved internally because it needs empirical data. Good and evil are such fundamentally nebulous ideas. Depending on who you ask, they can either be defined in absolute terms — or they are totally undefinable. Is ‘Good’ merely an act that helps more than it harms? Is ‘Evil’ the logical inversion of that? Is ‘Good’ strictly defined by cultural and societal norms? Is ‘Evil’ merely breaking the law?

Would you kill one person to save ninety-nine others? Does it matter who that one person is? Gandhi? Hitler?

Would you feel Evil by giving the order to go ahead and kill that one person, to save the ninety-nine? Or Good?

Perhaps it’s better to look at this from the angle of whether you feel justified in your action (or inaction).

Justification is the act of internal rationalisation. And being rational is basically what we we humans do. That’s what we’re inputting, processing and outputting, every minute of every day: rational decisions. Input data, process, rational output.

But here’s the kicker: we can only be as rational as our nurture and nature allows. But within those boundaries and limits, we are rational. 2 + 2 = 4, unless you’ve been told that it’s not. But even if the result is ‘wrong’, we continue to process the data in exactly the same way, because how could we ever exist if we doubted our own calculations? We must assume we’re right. We must assume our actions are rational. How can we possibly know an answer’s wrong anyway? After 30 years of doing it one way, should we listen to someone that says we’re wrong? Or that new-fangled ’science’ thing — should we trust that? But wouldn’t that mean we’ve been wrong all our lives? That sounds like a bitter pill to swallow. We can perform actions ‘the wrong way’ or jump to the wrong conclusion for an entire life time and not realise!

So with that in mind… I started thinking about psychopaths. Are they rational? The term ‘psychosis’ defines a malady of the mind that causes irrationality. But is the psychotic aware of their irrationality?

As they drown a bag full of kittens and cackle maniacally, do they know they’re being evil? Is it even possible to be aware of their evilness? Could anyone ever be rationally evil? Can you be rationally evil? Is evil only someone else’s point of view? Have you ever felt really evil? I haven’t…

I’m trying to get my head around this one. Did Hitler think he was being mean, nasty or evil when he signed off on the Jewish ghettos and executions? I bet he didn’t. Perhaps it takes a good person to be willfully evil? Hmm…

I know this one is pretty vague. I’m curious if anyone’s ever actually felt evil though — and I don’t mean in a passing, fleeting way, like when you ignore a hitchhiker or put your pet down. Don’t think about it too much though, because chances are you are rationalising and convincing yourself of weird/maligned actions hundreds of times a day. What are you doing that is actually wrong? Ugh! An entry on ethics might be necessary, if I can even hope to do that topic justice.

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Discussing ethics is a little fruitless, at least if you like reaching conclusions. Generally they are rules that govern a particular area or school of thought: medical ethics, political ethics, social ethics — in any given setting, there are ways in which you ’should’ act or behave or even think.

Fortunately, due to us pesky humans being at the top of the food chain, it’s been fairly easy to decide what is and isn’t ethical: that which helps mankind is good; that which harms mankind is bad.

But… how would you about creating a system of ethics for that which isn’t human?

If you can save a human or a cat from falling into a chasm, you save your fellow man.

What if the cat has to decide whether he saves you or another cat?

* * *

The ‘classic’ Robot Ethics example is this:

If a robot murders, who is accountable?

Robots can not yet program themselves; so must the designer be sent to jail?

Robots can not yet build themselves; so must the engineer be sent to jail?

Or… can we actually blame the robot? What good is justice, jail or the death penalty if the robot does not feel? If a robot is a senseless, emotionless killing machine, will justice have been served by just unplugging the robot?

* * *

Now the really sticky bit: what if we (somehow) create robots in good conscience, robots that never murder, never steal — robots that always act ‘ethically’. What if, as they would surely follow in the footsteps of their human creators, they learn to program themselves? What if robots can build themselves?

This is all a very old train of thought but it ties in with the question I asked yesterday: ‘What makes us human?‘ — at what stage do these robots become sentient, self-aware? Better yet: if you unplug a sentient robot, do they cease being self-aware? If there’s a soul, what happens?

In the original falling-into-a-chasm example, you don’t hesitate to choose the human as more important than a cat. What if a robot has to choose between saving one of us, or another robot? What’s the ethical choice from the robot’s point of view?

<Mind explodes>

* * *

Back to humans and humanity. What happens when we finally play around with cybernetic brain implants? Does this become a religious or spiritual issue? If having a soul is what separates us from the rest of the food chain, surely we must somehow look after this tenuous physical/spiritual link; would modifying our brain with artificial technology alter or sever that link; would it make us soulless?

At what stage do we, by definition, become robots?

Looking into Pandora’s box I can see another nastier, gloopier issue: what if we’re already soulless? What if there’s really nothing to differentiate us from our finely-engineered robotic brethren? Would that just make us our android overlord’s herd of cattle?

I’ve been tackling the subject of authority (who or what you trust when seeking the answer to a question) and knowledge (a working, true data set) for a while now. I haven’t really gone into ethics because it’s a sticky one. I’m going to try it now, in a couple of articles.

* * *

I think it’s painfully apparent to everyone by now that technology itself is not a good thing.

Technology is merely a tool. Really, that’s all. Technology is a tool that can be used for good or bad. In the future, technology might gain sentience and become much more than a tool, but that’s outside the scope of this entry because… well… arguing something that may or may not come true is hard work. And I’m not a sci-fi author.

There’s an old, trite argument, but it illustrates my point: guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Technology is the same thing, but because inventions are new and shiny, people are mostly blind to its nefarious uses; it lacks the evil connotations of the gun that we’ve developed over hundreds of years. When the gun was first invented it wasn’t ‘bad’ either — just new, and very cool.

Technology — the idea of new inventions, modifications, enhancements – really is the same thing as the humble gun. I mean, if you want proof, a gun is technology. Weaponry is one of the longest chains of technological development in history! And it’s not abating either… it has a long way to go. I’m sure you’re aware of the tax money that goes into ‘defence’. Weapon technology has been the deciding factor of major wars and the continuation of empires and dynasties — having advanced weapons is (sadly?) probably the pinnacle of any given modern civilisation.

But because guns (and canons and muskets and rifles and…) have killed huge swathes of the population, does that make technology bad?

There are literally millions (billions?) of people that would say guns and weapons are Bad Things. They kill people, ergo… bad. Before guns, we had swords, spears, slings — were they also bad?

How about fire? Was Prometheus, the lad that stole fire from the Gods, the greatest war criminal of all time? Without fire, almost everything you see today wouldn’t exist. Chemical energy is the end of that technology chain, and we frickin’ worship chemical energy.

That’s the thing — without fire, that desk in front of you wouldn’t exist. That’s how technology works — it’s omnipotent and omnipresent. You can’t staunch the flow of one technology and expect to carry on living the life you live.

Without fire, we would have burnt out [hah -- frozen to death more likely] and gone extinct a long time ago. Without spears, we would’ve starved. Without guns we would’ve perished in wars.

You see how I keep using the word ‘we’? It’s a selfish thing, eh? Man makes fire because he doesn’t want to freeze. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Man fashions a spear because without it, he uses more energy hunting than he gains from the animal’s flesh. Man crafts a gun because it lets him kill — or threaten — at range, without putting himself at risk. SELFISH!

But what’s the other option? No technology? No fire? No human race? Just step to the side and make way for another master species? How on earth are we ever going to agree to that? No, we can’t stop progressing — that’s one thing we can’t do. We might nuke ourself in the process, like so many civilisations before us, but it’s better than standing still, stagnating, dying.

We can agree then that technology isn’t a good thing itself, but something so intrinsic to human survival that we can’t imagine life without it, without tools. But as always, when anything involves humans, it’s more complicated than that.

With technology we create both solutions and problems. One caveman uses fire to cook his food while another uses it to brand dissident villagers. You keep a gun in the house to dissuade burglars, I keep a gun to shoot Negroes. While one scientist is planning clean, sustained energy from nuclear fission, another is working under the duress of an evil mastermind that wants to nuke us to smithereens.

Thus there are some that think technology has lowered our quality of life — that technology is a bad thing — though that’s impossible if you take ‘technology’ to mean any and every tool we’ve ever fashioned. So they probably mean ‘recent technology’ — the atomic bomb, the Internet, sports cars, Facebook, etc.

And maybe they have a point. You’d never think of a telephone as a bad thing, right? But the Internet? Maybe. Fire’s a good thing — but weapons of mass destruction? Probably not. They’re both advancements on the same technological line

It’s too unknown. The rules are unknown, the lines are blurred. There have been failed technologies in the past

Merry Christmas! Or Winter Solstice! Whatever!

As the last few days of 2009 and the decade dribble lazily through the hourglass’s pinch of incessant, unstoppable time, my focus turns inward. I’m not prone to introversion — really, it’s sometimes a little worrying how little I stop to care; least of all care about myself. Obviously, the delicious irony is that the moment I try to think about why I don’t care, I stop caring and think about something else. I guess it’s something deep-seated; or perhaps it’s just not good to care about all the small things?

God knows I’ve done OK so far, without the over-analysis, without the stopping-to-think. Water off a duck’s back. Don’t stop in a storm or you’re liable to get drenched. Maybe nothing bad has happened to me because I’m not waiting for it to happen? We make our own luck, right?

2009 has been a fantastic year; the best of my exciting quarter decade [oops -S] of living. I feel incredibly grateful to have shared it with all of you. I have this blog to thank — or blame — for almost everything that happened to me this year. I have this blog to thank for good, for bad, and for the ugly.

I have a lot to write, and not a lot of time to do it in (damn Christmas), so I’m afraid this will spill into tomorrow’s entry, and maybe even Thursday.

From the top then:

The Good of 2009 (#1): The Blog

Let me gush for a moment; don’t try to stop me [it's late as I write this, so I might ramble]. I’ve been writing for years — but probably not as long as you think. I stopped writing creatively back when I was 16. No real reason: my interest just moved on to other things. I kept a LiveJournal through university, mostly for my family, but it wasn’t particularly deep nor was it well-written. This year… I have begun writing properly, for the first time.

Seriously, before this year, the last thing I wrote was an exam for GCSE English, aged 14. If you look back to the beginning of this blog — way back in January 2009 — you’ll notice that my, er, control of the English language has improved! I can’t read back without wincing; it’s a bit like looking at old photos with bad haircuts, I guess.

Anyway, at the start of the year I gave up my previous job, website design and programming, with the intention of writing. I didn’t really have any other ideas at the time. I just wanted to write.

Basically, I feel like I have something I should share with the world. Writing is a very good way to do that. Speaking is even better, but people that know me in real life will tell you that I’m already good at the speaking thing. I’m rambling. My hope is, by reading, that you feel slightly better off than if you didn’t read.

The Bad of 2009 (#1): No Girlfriend

Yes yes… cry me a river…

It’s now been, shit… three years since I had a girlfriend? No, it must be two… surely…

Anyway, it’s been a long time. If fault must be ascribed, I suppose it’s only fair that it should sit squarely on my shoulders. I mean… I could’ve been more proactive in the whole girlfriend-seeking thing. My mother usually chimes in around now to say ‘Seb, you won’t get a girlfriend if you never leave your room’ and she’s not wrong. If this was a New Year’s resolution thing, I’d probably be saying, at this juncture, that I need to get out more. Fortunately, it’s not yet New Year, and these aren’t my resolutions… so I won’t be getting out more.

I simply like my own company a lot more than that of other people. Sad, I agree. Perhaps I haven’t met the right person yet? (This is to do with friends too: I have no friends, thus no girlfriend.) Obviously I have to go out to have a chance at meeting the right people. Catch-22 (which is a good book by the way, if a little crazy; reading it at the moment).

Perhaps I should just travel more. I didn’t travel enough this year. Or maybe I shouldn’t work so hard so that I can get out a little more and recover the friends I once had. I do hate general ‘out’ places though: pubs and clubs are so banal, so pointless. Cinemas are a little better. Restaurants are great — but you have to get to the restaurant stage. It’s hard for me to describe, without you being inside my head, the actual issue. I won’t bother right now — let’s just leave it at ‘I like my own company’.

But I’d like someone to snuggle. Definitely. And maybe some sex. But more the snuggling. Actually, it’s more so that I have someone to bounce my crazy plans for world domination off, but let’s keep that one quiet for now.

The Ugly of 2009 (#1): Working Too Hard

Ah the double-edged blade of effort. What is too much effort? And what is not enough?

Can a man of such young years, still without a solid career, even consider the idea of working too much? Surely these are the years when I should be working my (sadly) flat ass off to make a name and a position in the world for myself.

But at the same time, I am an artist, I am creative. All work and no play. So far I’ve got by with making sure work is creativity. With my new writing job (I’m now a lead/editor!), and an urge to actually get the cogs turning on a few grandiose machinations, playtime has taken a back seat.

I can’t help but think that kicking back and enjoying well-earnt and delectable pleasures is something I ought to do. I just don’t know if I should take a break now, or in another year. I’ve done so much this year that I probably shouldn’t stop now, but I don’t want to burn out.

* * *

More tomorrow!

[In the olden days I used to always have punchy, interesting titles on my blog entries. Funny how that's kind of died down. I wonder if more people would read if I try to be sensational...]

Yesterday I began an epic journey of introspection self-actualisation. I’m trying to digest 2009 by labelling the major milestones or stand-out points as good, bad or ugly. I actually made a list on paper (I was in the car), and I couldn’t actually come up with much bad stuff. Is it really too crazy to suggest that not a single bad thing happened to me in the span of a year? Hm…

Anyway, first, a couple of photos from the archives that never made it to Flickr or this blog.

(This is about 10 minutes before the ‘pond sunset’ photos that I showed you last week. I can’t begin to describe how much I love low-angled winter sun. Look at the shadow cast by the little mounds of snow on the ground! And gawd… the colour. THE COLOUR.)

(This is an odd one, taken at around 1am, just as the snow had finished falling last week. Broken bird table in the foreground, dining room window in the background. I like it; it makes it look like we live in a castle — but it’s a bit odd.)

The Good of 2009 (#2): The Arts & Critical Analysis

This is a good, meaty one. With my daily grind shifted away from website design, my mind seems to have opened up. Perhaps it’s the equivalent of travelling to another country, but mentally. I find myself contemplating the intricacies of concepts and ideas that simply didn’t occur to me last year. It’s not like these are new thoughts either: almost all of what I write here is old ideas, with a new spin.

I’m just infinitely more capable of turning an idea over in my head to analyse all of its facets.

I want to believe that my elevated ability of critical analysis comes from reading and writing, but it might simply be the culmination of travel and life experience. Writing here certainly helps — it’s no good having revolutionary, world-agitating ideas if you can’t put them into words.

It’s definitely led me into some dark and oppressive trains of thought too. I’d never really got the whole ‘epiphany’ thing until recently, when I was sitting outside, looking up into the cosmos and trying to catch shooting stars. Woah. This thing is… big.

The Bad of 2009 (#2): Intentionally Left Blank

I told you I was really struggling to find bad things in 2009. I guess we’ll have to leave it as simply ‘no girlfriend’ then. Let’s hope this no-bad thing is a trend I can continue into 2010!

The Ugly of 2009 (#3): Photography

Now this might be a little contentious, and I might simply be worrying about nothing much at all but… the photography isn’t doing as well as I’d like. I mean, technically, I am getting better with every frame I shoot. My digital darkroom process is, in my opinion, one of the best out there. It sounds big-headed, but it’s rare that I see a photo that impresses me more than my own. It does happen of course — but… I am not as amazed by commercial, successful photographers as I ought to be.

I look at magazine covers and shrug. Editorial photos… hit and miss. Even the old standard, the music magazine front covers… mediocre. There are still some stand-out photos of course, but they are rare. Why don’t I have their job instead?

But then I consider how lucky I was to get my writing job. Many people struggle for years or decades before they get a big break. I think photography (as fine art) is the same. It’s not like I am taking commercial/paparazzi photos. It’s not like I am taking portraits of figureheads or celebrities.

And then I look at a frickin’ copy of the National Geographic. I think, in total, over 10 years of reading NG, I’ve seen about five bad photos.

I’m lumping this one under ‘ugly’ because I’m simply not sure if I’m doing well or not. I have an optimistic feeling that my photographic efforts will pay off in 2010, but there’s a chance it won’t happen for years and years… and that’s something I should be prepared for!

I didn’t pick up a camera to be famous or successful though. I picked up a camera eight years ago because I wanted an excuse to push me outside, away from my computers. If I was still only measuring myself by that meter, it’s been a resounding success. Unfortunately, I’ve now had a taste of just how good I could be as a photographer… and now I want to be BIG.

* * *

I think I’m done here. But something might pop up on Thursday, we’ll see!