Do not sacrifice present lives to an unproved promise of forever
Proposed ethical guardrails. An unlimited aspiration can create a dangerous accounting shortcut: if the imagined future is infinitely valuable, every present objection may be dismissed as negligible. Necromancer’s proposed charter rejects that move. The uncertainties are real, present people have agency, and ecological damage does not become harmless because a story promises an eventual cosmic rescue.
Proposed ethical guardrails. This page expands the “Do not sacrifice present lives to an unproved promise of forever” chapter in the neuroscience collection.
An unlimited aspiration can create a dangerous accounting shortcut: if the imagined future is infinitely valuable, every present objection may be dismissed as negligible. Necromancer’s proposed charter rejects that move. The uncertainties are real, present people have agency, and ecological damage does not become harmless because a story promises an eventual cosmic rescue.
Participation remains voluntary. Evidence remains inspectable. Benefits and burdens need reasons that affected people can question. A long-term mission should broaden responsibility, not suspend ordinary care or give an institution unlimited authority. The ability to criticize the mission’s implementation is part of the desired future.
The same principle applies to AI. A benevolent mascot does not prove the behavior of a real system. Any actual technology would need its own evaluation, permissions, oversight, and ability to be corrected or stopped. The cheerful character Giggles supplies an ethical image; it is not a substitute for demonstrating that a deployed system deserves trust.
The goal is flourishing that includes freedom, plurality, rest, and care for the living world. Everything awesome forever is the motivating phrase. Making conditions measurably better, without hiding the unknowns, is the work available to the team now.
Open this exact section in the Necromancer dossier. The original chapter status is “Proposed ethical guardrails.”
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