WISDOMISM A Moral Theory for the Age of Information

 WISDOMISM A Moral Theory for the Age of Information

by Tom W. Bell[Editor: this article is reprinted from Extropy # 2, winter 1989. Extropy was published by the Extropy institute ]

In the last issue of EXTROPY, co-editor Max O'Connor presented a number of powerful arguments for amoralism in his article titled "Morality or Reality?"(https://arch-anarchism.blogspot.com/2023/12/morality-or-reality.html). While I share many of Max's sentiments, I think that he goes too far in rejecting all moral systems. He reveals the attitude of one who, disappointed with physicists’ failure to produce a grand unified theory, demands that we do away with physics altogether. As a guide to the behavior of rational, autonomous agents, morality serves an important role in our lives. Morality may still be imperfect, but that's no reason to quit the study of ethics altogether. Let's give morality another chance.                                                                                                                    

In the pages that follow, I'll present a new moral theory, one I call "Wisdomism." Wisdomism is a teleological moral theory that defines good acts for an agent as those that maximize the agent's wisdom. I will briefly lay out Wisdomism's basic principles, examine some of their consequences, and defend the theory against objections. As a relative newcomer to the field of ethics, Wisdomism has a way to go. Nevertheless, extropians will find Wisdomism particularly appealing - more so than the formless chaos of amoralism.

1. Wisdomism's Origin

A. Its Aristotelian Roots

       Wisdomism takes roots in the moral theory that Aristotle presents in his Nichomachean Ethics. Like Aristotle, I seek the human telos, or end, in what is unique to humans. I consider rationality to be such a trait, as does he. Likewise, we agree that the good for humans is the fulfillment of their particular telos. But although human rationality is unique, it is only one of many special attributes of the human brain. Humans exercise not only highly developed powers of abstract deductive reasoning (i.e., what Aristotle means by 'rationality'), but also inductive reasoning, creativity, massive data storage and recall, great flexibility, etc. In order to embrace all these information processing powers of the human brain, I employ the general term ‘wisdom’. While it is true that other animals process information, too, none do so as well as we humans. What is unique to us, therefore, is our great power to process information, our particularly high degree of wisdom. It follows that the development of wisdom is our particular telos, and the highest human good.

We see then how Wisdomism springs afresh from venerable Aristotelian stock. Wisdomism branches away from Aristotle's moral theory rather quickly, however. Along with rationality, Aristotle includes virtue and the enjoyment of the exercise of rationality and virtue in his definition of the human telos. Given that these traits depend crucially on rationality, however, I don't think they merit status equal to it. So although the two theories share a common method of determining the human good, Wisdomism asserts that there is only one uniquely human trait, only one primary human telos, and only one basic human good: wisdom. The good act for any moral agent is therefore the act that maximizes that agent's wisdom.

B. Wisdomism and Ethical Egoism

Though I've rooted Wisdomism in Aristotelianism, we might also graft it onto ethical egoism. Ethical egoism claims that each person ought to act in his or her own interest. Fine, but what makes a person a person? Is it a body? No, for we grant personhood to the handicapped, mutilated, and severely ill—they can think like persons. Is it a brain, then? No, for even if we transferred our consciousness to computers, we would retain our personhood. How? By downloading our memories and thought processes - that is, our wisdom. This particular interpretation of selfhood leads us far from everyday ethical egoism, however. To Wisdomism, the self is just wisdom. The self combines a particular set of memories with a particular set of thought processes, knowledge with intelligence, data with processing rules. As I like to say, the self is an ‘information construct’. But this means that like any other meme, selfhood follows information across the barriers of body and brain. If another brain in another body has exactly the same memories and thought processes as you do, it implies a replication of the self, mirroring or indicating a form of identical identity. Likewise, if someone shares a great deal of the ideology of a particular nation, church, or culture, he may find himself in a situation where he advances his self-interest, as embodied in the ideology he follows, at the expense of his body and brain. Sociobiologists say that natural selection has led to much the same result in regards to genetic selfhood: a mother sacrificing her own life for those of two or more of her children actually maximizes the preservation of her genetic self, since each of her offspring carries one-half of her genes. Whereas ethical egoism tells us to act in the interests of our selves as bodies and brains, Wisdomism tells us each to act in the interests of our selves as information constructs - no matter what medium we find ‘ourselves’ expressed in.

Consequences of Wisdomism

A. The Computability of Wisdom

While Wisdomism springs from Aristotelian roots, it bears one of the fruits of Utilitarianism: quantitatively determinate moral values. Just as Utilitarianism defines the good as utility, Wisdomism defines the good as wisdom. Theoretically, we can calculate utility via the hedonic calculus. Wisdom offers us the same measure of exactitude. As stated earlier, the information processing powers of the human brain give rise to our wisdom. We will someday possess sufficient knowledge of the brain's operation to describe its information processing in terms of inputs, outputs, and functional states, thus allowing us to determine the precise amount of wisdom in the human information processing system. Then Wisdomism will allow us to bridge the gap between science and morality. Wisdomism's moral principles will no longer be proscriptive, but descriptive. ‘Is’ will finally imply ‘ought’. Until such time, we may confidently employ what Mill called "rules of thumb" to guide our moral choices. For example, death is prima facie a great evil, for it destroys the fantastic information processing powers of the human brain and renders inaccessible the vast amounts of data encoded in the dead individual's memories. Seen in this light, death destroys one's unique wisdom, one's special information construct, one's only complete self. Likewise, we generally ought to encourage telling the truth, for the transmission of false information hinders our abilities to process information correctly, thereby decreasing our wisdom. Perhaps most importantly, Wisdomism tells us to generally pursue our own individual interests. We must restrict our moral decisions to the realm we know best. To try and decide the fate of all the information constructs similar to one's own would not only waste time, it would result in terrible miscalculations. So except in those rare situations where we wield great power and are extremely well-informed, Wisdomism asks only that we breathe easy and act like egoists. In these cases, and many others, we need not take the time to laboriously calculate the effects that our actions will have on the amount of our wisdom in the world at large; generally true rules of thumb will suffice. These examples of rules of thumb also serve to suggest a possible format for Wisdomism's particular ‘calculus’: "total wisdom = knowledge X intelligence X duration X probability" (where knowledge is the amount of information in a system and intelligence is the efficiency with which the system processes information). Under Wisdomism, therefore, the moral act for an agent is the one that maximizes the total amount of the agent's knowledge and intelligence, for these acts also maximize the agent's wisdom.

B. Wisdomism and Extropy

A fully developed functional description of the brain will be common for physicists to equate entropy with the loss of order or information in a system. It seems appropriate to posit wisdom as the exact opposite of entropy, making the two opposed as good and evil forces. We see then that wisdom equals extropy, and that Wisdomism defines extropy as the highest good. Equating good with extropy and evil with entropy may seem distressing in light of the second law of thermodynamics (i.e., that in a closed system entropy tends to increase or remain the same). Take heart, however: in semi-closed systems, such as here on Earth, entropy may actually decrease. It may also turn out that the universe at large is a perfectly reversible process, going from big bang to cosmic crush with no net increase in entropy. And in any case, embracing Wisdomism will give us the power to defeat the second law of thermodynamics. By fully understanding the laws of nature, we may someday come to overthrow their restrictions. They have, after all, been imposed on us against our wills - we never consented to their limitations. Wisdomism offers us ultimate anarchy and absolute freedom: down with the laws of nature!

C. Wisdomism's Generality

The discerning reader will note that I have been referring not only to the amount of wisdom in human brains but also to the amount of wisdom in information processing systems in general. That's because once we have a complete description of the human brain, we may expect to find functionally similar information processing systems embodied in other mediums. Only human chauvinism prevents us from admitting the possibility of wise extraterrestrials or conscious computer programs. We can then discover that economic and ecological systems exhibit all of the functional requirements for wisdom. Wisdomism asks that we consider the interests of these wise non-human systems, too - if they share our particular information constructs .

D. Wisdomism and Politics

Like most moral theories, Wisdomism's tenets have political repercussions. Wisdomism naturally favors political institutions that maximize the amount of wisdom in the world, just as Aristotelianism favors political institutions that maximize eudaimonia, and Utilitarianism favors those that maximize utility. In each of the three cases, it must remain, strictly speaking, an empirical question as to which political institution (if any) actually satisfies the standards of the concerned moral theory. Wisdomism differs from its Aristotelian and Utilitarian kin, however, in placing a value on political institutions per se, as information processing systems. At first glance, it seems as if Wisdomism says that what political system one ought to support depends on the particular information construct in one’s own head. If you think like a socialist, you'd act most morally by supporting socialism. If you share fascist ideals, you'd advance fascism. Recall, though, that Wisdomism says the best acts maximize the total amount of one's wisdom. This means we must consider how well political systems produce and process information, as well as their duration and probability of their continued success. Things aren't as simple as making the world satisfy our thoughts - we must also choose our thoughts so that they will satisfy the world. Wisdomism thus tends to favor democracies, insofar as their many voters serve to enrich the inputs into the political systems. Wisdomism likewise smiles upon the sort of parallel processing that multi-party systems afford and the free flow of information assured by constitutional rights. Wisdomism scarcely offers a carte blanche for government growth, however. Political systems flourish only at the expense of economic systems, and the latter may well embody more wisdom than the former. After all, citizens vote in binary - yes or no, while consumers convey their preferences in analog, via dollars and cents. Economic consumption therefore transmits much more information than voting. It therefore seems that Wisdomism will favor minimalist democratic constitutional republics at the most and free-market anarchies at the least.

3.Objections to Wisdomism and Its Defense

A. Is Wisdomism Anti-Human?

The most prominent worry about Wisdomism is that it might produce moral judgments contradictory to our common sense intuitions. Although I hope to assuage such worries, it bears noting that moral theories need not be too narrowly constrained by what we find most comforting. Of what use are morals if not to change our behavior? Wisdomism aims to make our actions right - not easy. Given Wisdomism's generality, we can imagine situations where the interests of one's own brain or body conflict with the interests of a wise non-human system sharing much of one’s own wisdom. For example, suppose that the vast power needs of a super-wise computer require an entire city of humans to forego electricity. Or suppose that it proves to be in the interests of some race of super-wise aliens to destroy the Earth in order to build a trans-universe expressway, as in "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Wisdomism might demand that humans sacrifice their comfort, perhaps even their lives, in such situations. Is this an acceptable result for a theory that purports to determine the good for humans?

First of all, let me note that most of Wisdomism’s tenets will correspond quite nicely to the moral intuitions that most of us already possess. This was demonstrated above, in the discussion of Wisdomism's rules of thumb. Wisdomism will never ask us to sacrifice our planet to alien civilian engineers, for example, because it recognizes the disposition for egoism as a wonderful means of advancing wisdom. Note secondly that moral intuitions don't always favor the interests of our bodies and brains, as is evident in many current moral debates. The environmentalist movement, for example, has been initiated by people who feel a deep empathy for vastly complex, efficient, and information-rich ecosystems. It shows particular concern for the wisest of non-human animals: dolphins and whales. We might say that environmentalists value the wisdom of Nature, a wisdom they feel they share. Animal rights activists and vegetarians likewise object to what they see as the needless destruction of their kin. All of these parties feel moral obligations to consider the interests of other information processing systems with which they share certain traits. It should not prove too surprising if Wisdomism asks us to do the same.

B. Is Wisdomism Cold-Hearted?

Some may object that Wisdomism is a theory that only a technocrat could curl up to. Nowhere in Wisdomism’s guidelines is a mention of pity, love, or compassion. It is, they might claim, a cold-hearted theory. While it's true that Wisdomism offers few of the emotional garnishes that usually accompany moral theories, I scarcely see this as a disadvantage. Though Wisdomism may be cold-hearted, at least it isn't hot-headed. I’ve made it clear that I consider emotions to be part of our baser natures. Emotions are drugs, and our attachment to them is nothing short of chemical dependency. But Wisdomism does not demand that we go cold turkey! For the present, we must tolerate our fleshly limitations, in the hopes that someday they may be overcome.

C. Is Wisdomism Fatalistic?

Some may find it curious that while I speak of Wisdomism being based on the laws of physics, in the same breath, I speak of following its tenets. If wisdom's course is determined by the laws of physics, of what use is a moral theory that tells us to help it along? Do physical laws leave any room for moral laws? Those who make this objection make the mistake of assuming that determinism must lead to fatalism. Just because the laws of physics dictate our behavior does not mean that we are free of moral responsibilities. Wisdomism is a part of the universal mechanism, too, and its force can be denied no more readily than that of gravity or magnetism. Indeed, we would have occasion to be surprised if the same laws of physics that have given rise to complex information processing hardware did not also generate software to ensure its survival. In a sense, that's exactly what Wisdomism is: a survival program for wise information processing systems.

To conclude, we've witnessed the birth of Wisdomism, the spread of its range of applications, and its defense against various attacks. As moral theories go, it is a mere newborn; clearly, it must develop a great deal before it can hope to challenge its predecessors. In at least one sense, though, Wisdomism already has an edge. The answers to all moral questions, even those that ask what (if any) moral theory we should adopt, demand the one thing that this theory promises to best provide: wisdom.

(Though this article was written as a rebuttal of Max's own views, he has lent a great deal of his own wisdom to its writing. More than just thanking him, I would like to tell him that he has acted morally - though as an amoralist he must refuse the latter accolade!)