A growing set of problems that I see in the decentralization movement and cryptocurrency space is the disregard for ethics and the lack of careful consideration of defense of human rights in designing technologies. So I'm going to attempt to join a discussion started by Vlad Zamfir but perhaps others like Dan Larimer on the necessity of prioritizing ethics and protection of rights. We may not all agree on which rights we value but in my opinion we need to come up with ethical standards and best practices with regard to the design of these platforms. Decentralization is a contributor to the greater good when it defends human rights and is used in ways which produce measurably good consequences for the world but when these technologies fail to do so then they become dangerous, destructive, and illegitimate.
Consequentialism is only one approach to ethics
Generally speaking there are two approaches to dealing with ethics which are 1) consequentialist and 2) deotologist. When we speak of libertarianism there are generally two varieties, the consequentialist libertarians who are libertarian only when libertarianism is producing better consequences than the alternative policies and the deontologist libertarians who believe in principles such as the non-aggressive principle. Consequentialists arrive at libertarian policies through carefully measuring outcomes and comparing them while deontologist libertarians are libertarian for libertarian sake, that is to say they choose to follow strict rules like the non-aggression principle or if Christian the "do onto others as you would like others to do onto you" golden rule.
This is a topic I have blogged about in the past Natural Rights Libertarianism vs. Consequentialist Libertarianism. It is not important to me which path or approach to ethics people decide to take as long as there is an approach being taken and ethics are deeply considered during every aspect of the design process. All the transparency in the world on developers doesn't trump an ethically designed formal specification because the developers aren't going to be perfect but the design can factor in human imperfection in it's formal specification so that it always trends toward a more ethical status quo. In essence the mechanism design, the formal specification, the UX, all have ethical dimensions which have to be carefully considered not just in the sense of where human beings are now ethically, but where our species is going and what capabilities we may have in 10 or 15 years.
Ethically aware blockchains and crypto-platforms are a must
There has been and still is a debate about immutability vs hard fork. The problem with that situation is that the blockchain wasn't designed to be ethically aware. It's simply not human to have something which cannot be stopped nor is it necessarily wise. It's important to always have the ability to correct a mistake and this applies not just to ethics but also to how life works in general. When smart contracts have no fail safe, when they are not allowed to fail, then manual consensus mechanisms take over and human beings have to hard fork. If Ethereum were designed from scratch to not have to hard fork ever then at least partly this could be avoided.
In general, the technologies we create have to be ethically aware. And it's not good enough to simply put our own ethics onto it as if we somehow at our current state of understanding have reached the zenith. It instead is better to create systems which can evolve along with our understanding of ethics and even contribute to improving our ability to understand ethics and for this reason among many others, it is important to have artificial intelligence capabilities baked in by design.
Why do we need to augment our intelligence?
In my posts about the exocortex or about AI many people might not understand where exactly I'm headed with these posts. Many might think it's science fiction or they perhaps just don't get the value proposition. The value of an exocortex, of agent based AI, of bots, of various forms of decentralized artificial intelligence, is because it is the only means we have of managing complexity. By augmenting our intelligence we also can augment our ability to be ethical and it is the tool which enhances the ability of the tool maker to make decisions about how to ethically design future iterations of the tool. In essence, what we gain from an exocortex/AI functionality is the ability to have a moral calculator which understands what we designate as our system of morality and which can help each one of us to make increasingly less bad decisions over time according to our criteria.
We need a blockchain which is aware of human rights and which helps us defend them
In my opinion it is not enough to just produce a blockchain which automates all sorts of business transactions but which leaves human beings to fend for themselves. It is important to create a technology whether it involve a blockchain data structure or not, which can be aware of the moral dimensions, the ethical dimensions, the legal dimensions, of decision making, of design. If we think about this then we can find that it is very possible to encode deontology in the form of deontic logic, we learn that all laws can be imported in such a way that the apps, bots, AI, are aware of the different laws in different jurisdictions at a level beyond what any human currently understands, and where AI can also be aware of the ethical dimensions, priorities, moral views, and make precise recommendations, or take precise actions on behalf of the network and or community of people it represents.
Human rights can be represented on a knowledge base in a language that AI can understand and use. Laws are kinds of rules which get enforced by society in a specific process. Rights get enforced by society as well in a specific process. It is possible to create agents (bots/AI) which can act on our behalf, but which can do so in a way which is more ethical than we can currently imagine, while also falling within the bounds of the law as it is currently written. An agent AI can have the knowledge of top lawyers, theologians, game theorists, and communicate back and forth with you to negotiate an action to take.
Conclusion
Decentralization is only valuable when it produces enhanced security, liberty, and happiness. If it's costing more than it's benefiting then it's no longer an ideal solution. It is up to us to do what we can to make sure these technologies produce benefits which always vastly outweigh the costs. In order to do this we have to put more resources, research, effort, into philosophy, ethics, rights protection, and security. It's not enough to simply create a decentralized platform and then simply walk away to let the chips fall, but it is important to consider how the community can govern the platform while considering the current very limited state humanity is in culturally, ethically, politically, and seek ways to transcend these limits using the platform itself. In a sense a feedback loop is needed between the human and the AI, so that we get what is known as IA (intelligent amplification) in the areas most critical to benefiting human rights protection.
References
- https://steemit.com/technology/@dana-edwards/thinking-outside-the-brain-why-we-need-to-build-a-decentralized-exocortex-part-2
- https://steemit.com/ai/@dana-edwards/personal-agents-what-are-expert-systems-do-expert-systems-benefit-from-decentralization
- https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dana-edwards/attention-based-stigmergic-distributed-collaborative-organizations
- https://steemit.com/steemit/@dana-edwards/personal-preference-bot-nets-and-the-quantification-of-intention
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification
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