Value

In general, bad things happen when things lose their value. Humanity in particular. When a culture can devalue a certain segment of society to the point that their non-existence and more valuable then their existence… really really bad things happen (holocausts). Or on a more simpler level, if my desire for what you have is more valuable to me then your happiness.. then I am going to be inclined to take what you have. So, where does value come from? Is value intrinsic or is it derived from some external source? Babies for instance: A human baby by itself has extremely low value. As horrible as this sounds, it will cease to exist if left on it’s own. However, to it’s parents (most of the time) a baby can be the most valuable thing in the Universe. They would do anything for this completely useless creature. I suppose you could make the argument that is a product an evolutionary process. Parents that have this high value of their offspring will care for their children and therefore propagate. If a child has a low value, it’s unlikely to continue on. The question I am getting at is.. can this be applied to God? Supposing we “create” an AI god.. will it come to view us as children that while we provide it no real value.. like a baby to it’s parents.. will it value us? I suppose it could value us like we value our ancestors.. perhaps a nice zoo or museum? Who knows, maybe we are already in a nice enclosure. One of those nice enclosures that convinces the viewer that the creature inside has no idea they are actually trapped. It does seem “convenient” that we can’t go the speed of light and escape our galaxy. Here’s another way to think about it: If we created “virtual” people in a virtual Universe.. could you come to see them as your children? Maybe it would help to think of them as talking ants in an ant farm. After getting over the shock of talking to your ants you learn their names and their different personalities.. you come to love and care for them. Why not? We already do this with a lot of animals.. animals that don’t even approach the intellect of toddlers. What if your ants were brilliant? Our dog has roughly zero to 1% in value in all practical sense. It’s practical value comes from it’s ability to clean up after our kids.. but it’s really just moving the mess outside. Yet, to my children it’s extremely valuable. So, moving on. If one dog is immensely valuable to them.. then two dogs would be twice as valuable. How about 10 or 200 dogs. Considerably less valuable. They couldn’t even name 200 dogs let alone care for them. So, the amount of something clearly plays a factor in our sense of value. I would like to think that if I had 200 human babies they would all be equally valuable. What about 6 billion? The quantity of something definitely plays a roll in value. I think this is where we are start losing common ground with God. When flying over a vast expanse of urban sprawl it’s nearly impossible to look down and place value on the team sea of souls. But, each person is most likely of infinite worth to someone. That’s why after a tragedy, a large loss of life, in order to feel anything we need to see the loss to someone else.. the loved ones left behind. You think about losing someone you love and suddenly the real weight of it hits you. Back to the my virtual people.. supposing I had created dozens of AI souls within a virtual world. Maybe I virtually lived amongst them for years. Sure, I could never quite get them to believe they weren’t really “real”. Maybe I was working on a way to make them real. What if I found a way to back up their digital soul and move them out of the “fake” world and into my “real” world. Maybe I could clone a human body and then upload their digital soul to it? But, then, someone came a long and wiped out my harddrive.. or corrupted the “disc”. Would my loss be any less real then losing friends on the other side of the globe. A “being” snuffed out is still gone. Right? Stephen Hawking is physically almost non-existent. Yet his mind for all intents and purposes lives on. He’s as close to a living computer program as it gets. In fact, the computer he uses to speak may have taken over years ago for all we know. Is he still valuable? Would he be deeply missed if he was gone? What if it body was completely gone but his computery voice and brilliant mind lived on?