Damon Horowitz calls for a "moral operating system"

http://www.ted.com At TEDxSiliconValley, Damon Horowitz reviews the enormous new powers that technology gives us: to know more -- and more about each other -- than ever before. Drawing the audience into a philosophical discussion, Horowitz invites us to pay new attention to the basic philosophy -- the ethical principles -- behind the burst of invention remaking our world. Where's the moral operating system that allows us to make sense of it?

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

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• TEDTalks
• Damon Horowitz
• moral operating system
• ethics
• principals
• philosophy

[cql8878]

I wanna have a supervisor as handsome as he is.

[TheAtheologian]

@StealThisIdentity My thumbs are up.

[StealThisIdentity]

@TheAtheologian I can’t dehumanize myself or go against my own sense of dignity. However, if the Saudi king’s form of respect is to be kissed on the lips, and that makes me uncomfortable, hell, at least it’s showing that he sees me as an equal.

[StealThisIdentity]

@TheAtheologian I guess a sense of respect based on everyone being social equals should be the standard. For instance, a king who asks me to bow down and kiss his shoe, or a needy person who tells me I would be disrespecting him if I didn’t give him money, both these instances of me showing them respect would be inherently disrespectful to myself.

[StealThisIdentity]

@TheAtheologian Unless they think being respected means you doing something for them that is contradicting to your integrity, I suppose. So yeah, it is complicated...who's sense of respect should get respected?

[StealThisIdentity]

@TheAtheologian Which makes me think -- autistic people don't like to be hugged, yet I loved to be hugged. The golden rule doesn't mean "treat people specifically the way you would want to be treated." It means to me, "when you're not playing a game who's rules are otherwise, treat people with respect because you want to be treated with respect, but first learn their definition of respect."

[StealThisIdentity]

@TheAtheologian I don't necessarily disagree with your main point :P It's pretty interesting. It's not that I understand how other people may feel differently from me. In fact, I do understand because I feel the same as them. It's just the normal rules don't apply to role playing games. Actors and actresses don't get lost in their roles, and neither do I. The Marquis de Sade, on the other hand... well he may have had some kind of disorder.

[TheAtheologian]

@StealThisIdentity Are you by any chance a massive fan of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill? Because you have a stunning similarity of thought with both, though mostly Aristotle.

Mill would say it is your right to do anything that does not directly harm others, and I am leaning on this being the apt response, but I agree, the question is not an easy one. Which was sort of my point those two months ago, in demonstrating that it is not as simple as "one rule to rule them all".

[TheAtheologian]

@StealThisIdentity With this comment and the other one you actually highlighted and suppoted my argument :P

I don't think you think that others enjoy what you enjoy, but using the golden rule you strictly speaking should. And since you understand that others may feel differently to you, you know that other people might feel differently about something else. Similarly so do suicidal people, who should, using the rule, kill other people, but they don't because the rule is faulty.

[StealThisIdentity]

@TheAtheologian I think the hardest part of figuring out the golden rule is that some people value property more than collective sharing and other people value collective sharing over property. The ethics here may have to do with what we as humans have the "right" to. Are there some situations where it comes down to your rights vs. my rights? "My right to purchase your good/service" vs. "your right to discriminate" or the "right to tax income" is a very intense debate.