Everyone is in favor of morality, but most people don’t even know what it is.
The moral thing to do isn’t a matter of opinion. Philosophers have spent thousands of years working out the details of how we can know good from bad, right from wrong. The core is clearer than the public fight suggests — clear enough that we can start with a plain summary, then go deeper where you want.
And once we know how morality works, we can start making the world a better, more moral place. Interested? Let’s go.
The definition is simple: morality is a standard you would still accept even if you were the one burdened by it.
That means the opposite is also true: if you assert a rule for someone else that you wouldn’t want to live under if you were them, that’s immoral.
Ideas worth following
It’s a simple idea, but it has real consequences for how we live and for the rules that govern everyone in a community.
Prefer a path? Five questions. One primary door each.
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But doesn’t everyone disagree about morality?
They do if they haven’t studied it — and philosophers still disagree about some of the details. For the most part, though, the core grammar is settled enough to use.
Is it true that AIs know everything but care about nothing?
Because morality is fundamentally about logic, AIs can know right from wrong — they can tell us what is morally correct given enough information. Whether they care that it’s right, and why they would, is a separate question. Seeing the right answer is not living by it. But some of the mechanisms by which humans come to care may apply to machines, too.
How can we live together when we disagree about morality?
Institutions don’t determine what’s right, but they help people keep promises and spot fakes. When they hollow out, fairness gets easier to fake. There are tools that help us get it right most of the time without spending all our time thinking about it.
What if the wealthy and powerful exempt themselves?
The powerful can impose their will whether or not it’s moral. That doesn’t make them right — and it doesn’t make morality irrelevant. They may get their way for a while, but short-term wins have long-term consequences that even the wealthiest would care about if they saw them clearly.
There is a lot we don’t know about artificial intelligence, including consciousness and moral motivation. There is also a lot we do know — enough that we have reason to step carefully.
