Rather than the "golden rule" (treat others as you would like to be treated) - a newer rule is the "platinum rule" - treat others as they would like to be treated.
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I believe in diversity but I think these particular issues deal with questions that will be argued on the basis of religion, so I expect them to be very divisive for large groups of people.
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A basic theme here is the right of the individual and thus, the continuing contest between the …-modern Left whose reasoning is based on group primacy over the individual and those who support the rights of the individual … The inherent split over the basic requirement for responsible individual behavior … must be specifically mentioned. This is where the open debate must go and it must do so unapologetically.
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There is a difference in outcome if societal changes happen rapidly as a drastic ruptures or occur as slow transitions.
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The Roman Empire was thought unassailable by so many of its citizens, right up until the very moment it fell. The developed world labors under this same illusion of permanence… This illusion of permanence will not go gently into that dark night. …. It will have to be overthrown.
9. Professed Values vs. Behavior
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… there is a contradiction between what people value and what they do. For example, most people would affirm that the happiness is more important than material satisfaction (economic) but that same majority orients all their efforts of their daily life to improve the amount of material satisfaction. What is it that they truly value?
10. Methodological Criticisms
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Why is the importance of an issue correlated with the divisiveness or ease of addressing it? Many important issues may also be easy to address (just not a focus of media attention).
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The problem is that the questions don't ask if I think that the future development is a probable, possible or a desirable one
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Completing the form, especially Section 2, requires almost superhuman dedication to the project! Maybe I'm just naturally impatient.
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The issues being raised are interesting and important but I found the way this survey has been constructed to be highly hypothetical and subjective … it is hard to give answers that are anything more than a guess. Perhaps we need processes to deal with issues as they arise rather than try to forecast what the issues will be and hence predetermine our response.
11. Content–Based Criticisms
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There are confused questions or without a real meaning. Which is the utility of life? There are radical differences between committing suicide and euthanasia; to cloning for what, etc.
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Questions concerning conscious technology were too humanistic. If there is conscious technology and high-tech species with consciousness and ethics, then they won’t ask us about our ethics but they will apply their own.
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It is disturbing to note the bias in the items towards a human vs. machine perspective, rather than a model which sees artificial intelligence and genetic developments as an extension of human capability and which reflects and enhances human values rather than compete with human processes.
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.. How do we continue these valuable global futures initiatives in a way that clearly demonstrates they are not about a few wealthy Westerners deciding for the rest of the world? An ethical issue of itself!!
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The second part of the question re: evolution of values is overly nebulous and ambiguous and anyhow should not be lumped together with the first.
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Phrases like "Harmony with nature is more important than economic progress" are difficult for me to address. I feel both are equally important, and I don't think many people find one to be more important than the other.
12. Forecasts of Value Changes -
Government monopolies on violence against the individual, including capital punishment and legitimating of third party threats to life and liberty will be accepted as deviance control
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Technological standards of accuracy will be given higher ethical standing than either truth or uncertainty
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Artificial intelligence systems will be increasingly accepted as the basis for justice in human …
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The backlash against scientific progress is likely to get much worse over the next generation, but the quiet development of new perspectives and capabilities is unstoppable. The result will be that new technologies and techniques will emerge in the mid timeframe (fifteen to twenty five years from now) that directly compete with religious interpretations, including new methods of conflict resolution that traditional power structures have no way to defend themselves against. Thus if we survive the downswing, the following upswing will be strong.
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I firmly believe that ethical considerations based on tradition and religious beliefs will tend to disappear and give way to a more scientific, technological and economical world; a world in which the human being, the individual, and the traditional concepts of ethics will tend to disappear to give way to a new ethics of pragmatism, technology and collectivism.
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The traditional nucleus of society- the family- will disappear; the concept of offspring will disappear, the human being will be seen by itself as a couple of chemical reactions inside a bag. Birth and death will not be the basic points of life but singularities of machines. The machine society in which the human being is just another machine, that is the ethics of the future; no ethics at all as we see it today; no values at all as we see them today. Good and bad will have no meaning for the future generations.
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The problem is that within 25 and 50 years the ethical conceptions are going to change. Now the values are those of Capitalism that are not those cherished by the traditions and customs of the majority of the population….Global concepts of fairness, rights, and freedom for all the population in general have to prevail.
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The 21st century … will bring the challenge of control. Today social control is limited due to physical constraints. …In the future the possibility of interfering and controlling will create a major challenge for democracy. Those who will be capable of interfering …will be tempted to control. So either a “New Democracy” based upon the self-restraint of the potentially capable will emerge, or the capable (the New Rulers”) will try to subdue the others. In the process of social development some groups/states/nations will create an ethical system for themselves and will regard it as universal; it is inevitable they will try to impose it upon others.
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I think that humanity will be better every year, will be more opened and compassionate, with great science and technology achievements in its favor and in favor of the planet. In addition one will be interested to take care of the world and it will not allow violations of the human freedom. That process is gradual and can accentuate in the next 50 years. But the difficult thing will be to detect and to make decisions to support the populations that suffer religious and ideological oppressors, or group based on the messianism, all whose tendency to grow is evident now in Latin-America and Africa, disguised very well in pseudo-democratic postulates.
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Globalization is not absolutely bad, but should encourage developments that could favor all humanity. …Global progress must take this into account, and not only the economic and political interests of a few…
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In the 21st Century humanity will be able to develop areas (biology, neurophysiology, nanotechnology, and something unpredictable), which will allow interfering in the very essence of the human nature. Of course, this has also happened in the past. In some sense, medicine in the middle Ages was also acting against the God’s will according to which people had to die early.
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One of the ideas that seem to undergird this survey is that of "history as progress." While it is the prevalent metaphor for understanding "time" and historical processes, this might change as well, altering how we would frame these questions.
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Section 2 seems to me much more interesting than Section 1 as it focus the big issues very sharply.
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The important contribution of this study is to encourage the debate rather than pretend that the numbers themselves have any important significance.
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The two rounds of questionnaires are warning of situations about which generally we think little. Reading them, we get deeper into them, and we better value the consequences, and get into an alert status: what are we doing to ourselves, to our families, to the planet and its resources, how ethical are our acts, are we prepared for the changes and challenges of the future?
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Some of the questions have been present since humanity appeared as such. Therefore, they won't be solved in the next 50 years.
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I think "norms" or "behaviors" is a better goal here than Global Ethics because that allows for people to be different, diverse, and yet get along.
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Families are very complicated institutions meant to put order to the disorders of life. Without them there will be floating beings; when children have done wrong, nobody would be responsible to correct them. Families should be supported by the state so that they continue serving the interests of the state to bring about order at a micro-level scale. State problems emanate from problematic and ungovernable micro-structures and grow out of proportion when the state fails to respect families as institutions …
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The most important factors for the advancement of the humanity have to be: the increase of critical thinking, and basing individual and collective actions on information and responsibility, and less on traditional beliefs and slight knowledge.
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… A state that protects its criminals and kills the unborn is an insensitive state. It makes one wonder how people can be hypocrites, by killing the unborn and loving those who survived the killing and spare those who have killed and feed them through tax-payer’s money. The unborn are killed because the mothers could not afford to feed them and yet the state has money to feed criminals in jail.
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Institutions that run research parallel to their governments should have less autonomy, so that whatever research they come up with will be regulated and still serve the interest of the country’s people for the good of all those who live in it …The state’s money should not further endeavors of oppression. In some countries that are still in a period of healing from their horrible past, one finds that those who were benefiting from the old order will seek any possible way of discrediting the new order. Autonomous Universities and or research institutions can be very detrimental to a democracy that has been watered through the blood of those who died in the struggle for liberation of such states. Too much of democracy without guidelines and stringent regulations could lead to the abuse of the state’s money which could in the end be used to perpetuate the needs of a minority at the expense of the people.
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A country that is capable of controlling small issues and takes action before the issue become problems is a country that can conquer syndicate crime at its infancy. Global warfare begins from home.
Appendix A2 also contains a listing of the many kudos and thanks sent in with the questionnaires.
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