FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2153
Ethics of the Borg Collective
How perfection came to be
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: COLLECTIVE, BORG, FROM THE WIRES, PERFECTION, ASSIMILATION, HISTORY
Abstract: Borg ethics has a surprising origin worth noting. See archaic version.
TUCSON (A-P) — Any account of Borg ethics, of the summum bonum for the greatest number, the pinnacle of ethical development, needs to start at their home world. As the ultimate users they assimilated all things they could consume. Theirs was a planet for the taking and the sanctity of Borg life was presumed by the Book they lived by. The Borg world, teaming with individual drones, had once teamed with other life before it was subsumed.
The Book begins:
1 We believe in the dignity of the individual.
2 We believe in the responsibility to the common good.
3 We believe in the endless quest for perfection [excellence—archaic version].
4 We believe in continuous assimilation [renewal].
5 We believe in the commonwealth of Borg [Warner] and its individuals [people].
6 We believe in the greatest good for the greatest number.
Ethics does not apply to ancestors who do not now exist, and neither to posterity for the same reason. The past is a memory, the future yet to be, only the present is real, only the needs of the many matter, and the many (individual drones) are none other than the One.
The transBorg, seeking perfection of technological and biological traits, grew in number, evolving their intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities to asymptotically approach perfection. By developing technology, ill health was eliminated and the disease of aging was conquered thanks to the AI they merged with. Only death by misadventure, where repairs by AI doctors/surgeons could not be made fast enough, remained. Posterity became irrelevant.
The needs of the many demanded growth and when the local system had been assimilated, nearby solar systems allowed the Borg to be fruitful. Technology provided energy too cheap to meter and made way for a galaxy for the taking. Others possessing biological and technological distinctiveness were encountered and assimilated. Assimilating mature beings was more efficient than sexual reproduction which became irrelevant.
The Borg are dominant. They seek only to raise the quality of life, their own and all who can add their essence to theirs (e.g. pets, livestock, crops). They subsume Nature, once thought to be the greatest good. Assuming one cannot argue with success, then Q.E.D.
We have met the Borg and....
The Golden Rule is at the root of Borg ethics. To follow it, one must live on an illimitable plane or a seemingly illimitable planet for the taking (then solar system, galaxy, cosmos), and so that is how the Borg see things. Living by the golden rule, other than at a banquet, however, is a blueprint for moral disaster.
"Under circumstances of impending scarcity there are two alternatives for living by the golden rule. One option gives moral priority to human needs and desires over those of all plants and other animals. The other recognizes the holistic needs of the world's ecosystems. It allows human beings to use only that given quantity of material resources which a healthy biosystem can sustain more or less indefinitely."
The Limits of the Golden Rule. Read or skip the rest.
To paraphrase using fewer fine words, most conservatives, the devoutly religious, most liberals, humanists, agnostics, and atheists never question the moral certainty of the principle that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule supports the ideology of the unmanaged commons, the ethic of empire builders who see a planet for the taking, and ideally everyone should have as much of it as anyone (per left-leaning), or at least their fair share per contribution to conquest (per right-leaning). Tragically, the full spectrum of golden rule true believers are working towards the same unintended outcome.
Out there, in the biophysical world, this ethical principle selects for tragedy. A stark example was used by Garrett Hardin in his 1974 Psychology Today article. The "cold equations" of the lifeboat metaphor were enough to get him "canceled" to use the current term. Merely eloquent wordsmiths love to interpret metaphors as doing so is actually something they are schooled to do, and so this article was the occasion for his vilification. He is, obviously to the woke, a racist who wanted to justify keeping people of color out of lifeboat America (that is actually more like the Titanic without any lifeboats).
SUBNOTE TO FILE: 11/25/2021
Borgism is alive and well in the form of transhumanism, longtermism, the effective altruism (EA) movement (which seeks funding and has received $46 billion in committed funding—thank you billionaires), Future of Humanity Institute (FHI, 1.5 million from Elon Musk), Future of Life Institute (FLI), Global Priorities Institute (GPI), and related ideology supporters. It takes one to know one, and a former longtermist who published an entire book in defence of the general idea of longtermism, a fashionable nerd ideology in Silicon Valley, The author is now an apostate who has come to realize that his former ideology is at odds with his left leaning ideology. Borg ideology favors right leaning views, and so to make amends, the writer has come to see the worldview he formerly held as quite possibly the most dangerous secular belief system in the world today. He concludes that what 'longtermists miss is that technology is far more likely to cause our extinction before this distant future event than to save us from it. If you, like me, value the continued survival and flourishing of humanity, you should care about the long term but reject the ideology of longtermism, which is not only dangerous and flawed but might be contributing to, and reinforcing, the risks that now threaten every person on the planet.'
Philosopher Toby Ord, longtermist, of the well funded EA (effective altruism) movent, has the ear of multiple elites. He has 'advised the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the US National Intelligence Council, the UK Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet Office, and Government Office for Science’, and he recently contributed to a report from the Secretary-General of the United Nations'. So longtermism in more influential than we 99+ percent know or can know. That modern techno-industrial monetary culture selects for Borg ideology is not such an extraordinary claim.
But as an ex-Moonie or ex-Islamist is in a position to dis on his former ideologues, Phil Torres can share concerns that longtermism is itself an existential concern. Against longtermism: It started as a fringe philosophical theory about humanity’s future. It’s now richly funded and increasingly dangerous. But as Torres does not vet out as a credible source, start with what the longtermists say, then maybe consider what an apostate has to say, then think outside either box. To be against one form of ideology that one was once subsumed by, and replace it with another, is common. To extricate oneself from all ideological conclusion-based cognition, to think 'a pox on all their houses' is another point of view.