Morality of Genetically Engineering Soldiers like Jem'hadar or Stormtroopers

[blahface]

If you could genetically engineer soldiers that don't care about their own lives or anything other than following orders within a moral framework (They won't commit war crimes), would this be immoral? If they enjoy following orders and they don't feel any kind of discomfort, then what would be the harm in a utilitarian point of view?

Or, what if instead of making them soldiers, we made them slaves that got enjoyment out of serving us? Let's say we have some kind of universal basic income for everyone else so they are happy. It would be their nature to want to serve us and if there were some defect in which they didn't want to serve us anymore they wouldn't have to. Would this be immoral?

[Guardsman Bass]

I'll admit that I feel revulsion to the idea of making changes to the genetic stock of a population of intelligent beings in order to make them servile slaves, but in general I don't think it's inherently immoral to create biological beings built such that they receive happiness from being useful in completing tasks for humans. It would be like the creation of servile robots, except that the "robots" would be biochemical instead of mechanical/electronic.

[K. A. Pital]

The creation of servile but fully sentient and self-aware robots is abhorrent.

Any person espousing such ideas is a slaver at heart and should be given the guillotine treatment.

Better sooner than later, as living in another age of slavery where you have billions of sentient creatures enslaved and used like smartphones is fucking sick.

[His Divine Shadow]

Better sooner than later, as living in another age of slavery where you have billions of sentient creatures enslaved and used like smartphones is fucking sick.

I assume we're living in the 1st now then.

[NecronLord]

If you could genetically engineer soldiers that don't care about their own lives or anything other than following orders within a moral framework (They won't commit war crimes),

This is prima-facie impossible; crimes against peace, IE provoking a war, are a category of warcrime.

Beyond this, how would such a goal be achieved? You want your neo-Janissaries to have a rote memory of your constitution and laws and then to judge you based on them? That invites Janissary rule.

would this be immoral? If they enjoy following orders and they don't feel any kind of discomfort, then what would be the harm in a utilitarian point of view?

Or, what if instead of making them soldiers, we made them slaves that got enjoyment out of serving us? Let's say we have some kind of universal basic income for everyone else so they are happy. It would be their nature to want to serve us and if there were some defect in which they didn't want to serve us anymore they wouldn't have to. Would this be immoral?

It is strongly implied by Star Trek DS9 writers, for your ur-example, that the Founders society has been in no small part damaged by the availability of such expendable people, to the point that they see everyone as equally expendable; even if you grant that somehow perfect slaves who enjoy it can exist, the act of slave-owning itself warps your perspective of the value of life in a way not compatible with modern liberal philosophies.

[Lord Revan]

Even if we ignore our left-wing members masturbating over the though of a bloody civil war happening, the very fact you have troops that are for all intents and purposes expendeble will have massive negative effects on the politics of that nation, seeing as a big reason why not even USA goes to war because they were bored is that there's gonna be a massive blacklash (that no big money is gonna be able to deal with no matter what some people might think) if too many bodybags will be sent home creating a treshold for engaging in war.

[K. A. Pital]

I didn't say civil war, I said slavers should be eradicated.

In this I don't even mean ordinary class struggle. Capitalists are humans and so are workers, imperfect as it is, under capitalism the person has free will and the classes also pursue their own goals.

But the slavery of a new kind such as proposed above is a thousand time more dangerous. It is being proposed to create genetically docile slaves who would found joy in their enslavement, thus unable to rebel or defend their interests. In fact their interests would be warped from birth to uphold and support their own enslavement.

That's not just oppressing people, that is much more - creating a race of pure slaves unable to value or comprehend freedom. It borders on a crime against humanity.

I am sure even our right-wing members would understand this.

[Lord Revan]

I didn't say civil war, I said slavers should be eradicated.

In this I don't even mean ordinary class struggle. Capitalists are humans and so are workers, imperfect as it is, under capitalism the person has free will and the classes also pursue their own goals.

But the slavery of a new kind such as proposed above is a thousand time more dangerous. It is being proposed to create genetically docile slaves who would found joy in their enslavement, thus unable to rebel or defend their interests. In fact their interests would be warped from birth to uphold and support their own enslavement.

That's not just oppressing people, that is much more - creating a race of pure slaves unable to value or comprehend freedom. It borders on a crime against humanity.

I am sure even our right-wing members would understand this.

On that we agree. As I implied in my post creating such expendeble people has a massive corrupting influence on the morals of the nation.

[jwl]

Don't you mean clone troopers? Most stromtroopers aren't clones, right?

[Zixinus]

If you could genetically engineer soldiers that don't care about their own lives or anything other than following orders within a moral framework (They won't commit war crimes), would this be immoral?

I would argue against it, seeing as genetically non-modified soldiers seem to be capable of killing people all the same and if you have such a high tech base, a war would be fought more on the basis of machines than individual people. If you have the tech-base for that, you might also modify existing people to make them better fit for the role of a soldier.

Circumstances would also wager into the situation: is your population capable of serving as soldiers? How much improvement do the soldiers actually represent and is it really that worthwhile? Do you really need to use biological soldiers? Could AI-controlled mass robots bet better? Are you fighting a war for economic benefits or for survival?

A point: what happens if the war ends? Do you have a plan, a framework for integrating the soldiers into society? Or at least find a socially-valuable use for them? Because if you don't or can't, then you have a problem.
Such as, what if they decide that the legitimate government is corrupt and they would be superior solution? Or, like it happened in Star Wars, use the soldiers' obedience to usurp legitimate government.

Or, what if instead of making them soldiers, we made them slaves that got enjoyment out of serving us? Let's say we have some kind of universal basic income for everyone else so they are happy. It would be their nature to want to serve us and if there were some defect in which they didn't want to serve us anymore they wouldn't have to. Would this be immoral?

Depends on what you mean by "serve". They can serve people as non-slaves. And if you have guaranteed basic income so basically everyone is happy, why do you need slaves?

[blahface]

Or, what if instead of making them soldiers, we made them slaves that got enjoyment out of serving us? Let's say we have some kind of universal basic income for everyone else so they are happy. It would be their nature to want to serve us and if there were some defect in which they didn't want to serve us anymore they wouldn't have to. Would this be immoral?

Depends on what you mean by "serve". They can serve people as non-slaves. And if you have guaranteed basic income so basically everyone is happy, why do you need slaves?

I meant that we wouldn't have to worry about unemployment because of a UBI. We'd have GE humans to happily do all our jobs for us.

[Elheru Aran]

Or, what if instead of making them soldiers, we made them slaves that got enjoyment out of serving us? Let's say we have some kind of universal basic income for everyone else so they are happy. It would be their nature to want to serve us and if there were some defect in which they didn't want to serve us anymore they wouldn't have to. Would this be immoral?

Depends on what you mean by "serve". They can serve people as non-slaves. And if you have guaranteed basic income so basically everyone is happy, why do you need slaves?

I meant that we wouldn't have to worry about unemployment because of a UBI. We'd have GE humans to happily do all our jobs for us.

So what would people do without jobs?

Work is necessary. Idleness breeds restlessness. Restlessness breeds... occasionally, bad things.

[Zixinus]

I meant that we wouldn't have to worry about unemployment because of a UBI. We'd have GE humans to happily do all our jobs for us.

That's a terrible plan. What if they don't want GE humans to take their jobs? Just because there is UBI doesn't mean that the extra money from employment isn't worthwhile. Forcefully replacing them will be bad.

[Purple]

For everyone who thinks it would be a bad thing to have what amounts to fleshy robots take over all jobs I think you have things the wrong way round. If people lost any and all job opportunities to what essentially amounts to free income that most definitively would NOT lead to an era of bored slobs doing nothing. It would lead to a cultural renaissance as everyone is now free to devote them self to doing what they love doing and exploring life to the fullest degree.

The carpenter that likes being a carpenter would still be a carpenter. He'd just be making stuff for his own enjoyment instead of taking orders. And the factory laborer who hates being a factory laborer could get to do something he likes for a change. Both would end up happier.

As for the whole morality dilemma proposed here it is something I'll address later when its not way, way past my bed time.

[Zaune]

So what would people do without jobs?

Create works of art and culture, do worthwhile but time-intensive stuff like archaeological digs full-time, study and/or teach subjects that interest them but are difficult to monetise, spend time with their kids...

What would you do if you didn't have to spend 40 hours or more a week doing whatever your day-job is just to cover food, rent and utilities?

Still. Returning to the main subject of the article, I'm pretty much with Stas on this. Genetically-engineering sapient beings to make them more obedient is a debasement and perversion of science and a violation of the sanctity of human life and free will, and if anyone actually did it then they should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

[Joun_Lord]

Its wrong as its slavery. Forcing a sapient being into servitude is slavery. Doesn't matter if the being enjoys serving, they never had choice and presumably still don't.

Genetically modifying people to be more adept at a job and enjoy it seems pretty iffy even if its people who choose to do that. Locking someone into a job, literally rebuilding them to only do that and altering their minds so they don't think their job is pure hell is fucked up already. There can be arguments for it probably but just as many against it. But again, there is still choice involved.

Someone from creation designed expressly to do a job without question or dislike has no choice. They cannot say no, they are literally built not to. To do that to a sapient being is beyond wrong.

[FireNexus]

I don't really know. "THEY DON'T HAVE A CHOICE!" Seems like a pretty useless justification, depending on the system. Designin them to be soldiers, to want to soldier, to enjoy the kind of work that soldiering involves, then giving them an opportunity... What's the problem? If you give them a choice, but carefully construct their biochemistry and personality so they'll make the choice that's optimal for you, why not?

Your choices in life are not categorically superior to the hypothetical engineered soldier's just because the biochemical sequence of events leading to your decisions was guided by natural selection and chance and theirs was guided by a skilled geneticist and a carefully controlled environment. If you can make a being that is most happy when soldiering, rather than trying to find them from society and making a lot of miserable people out of the non-optimal version, it would seem like a net good.

For this to work, they'd need to have at least the veneer of a choice in the matter. Jem'hadar style slavery reinforced by nutrient deficiency is obviously fucked up. The engineered loyalty of their mind, such that most are loyal to the dominion with minimal education and happy to fuck shut up, is not really objectionable. The "obey or die slow" situation is.

[His Divine Shadow]

The above reasoning does ring true when thinking of it from the perspective of these slaves. The main reason thus that I can see for why it would be immoral is as was said by others already. Namely how it would affect us and our values, morals and ideals. We would be the lesser for it.

[FireNexus]

That was an argument in the thread that I missed. Having willing auicide bombers to heel... If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

That said, I was never advocating doing this. I just find the "Well, obviously this is wrong because I wouldn't want it for myself" justification irritating. This is a scenario that turns upside down the reasons we decide that slavery is wrong, since the harms that it has historically caused simply don't exist. There may be new reasons that this practice is wrong (moral degradation of society through disposable people) but they aren't the same reasons slavery is wrong today.

Skimming the thread, I missed the argument you repeated and only saw variations on "This feels icky because it reminds me of something I wouldn't want for me or a random normal human". This ain't a random normal human, so you can't use random normal as benchmark for that being's suffering.

[Feil]

This is actually three questions. You're going to get bad answers because you're not asking them clearly.

1) Is it moral to program a person from childhood to enjoy a task of any kind, even a totally innocuous one?
[What about a beneficial one? Does it matter whether the programming is psychological (using a system of rewards and punishments) or technological (genetic engineering, drugs, etc)? Does the intensity of the programming (from mild inclination to unbreakable compulsion) change the morality of it?]
2) Supposing someone wants to do something that they know full well does not promote their own health and well-being, is it best to allow them, encourage them, discourage them, or prevent them? What if they haven't decided whether they want to or not, yet?
3) Supposing someone wants to serve you to the point that they're willing to be exploited, is it moral to exploit them to the maximum extent possible, or do you have an obligation to treat them better than you really need to?

[Purple]

Once you break it down like that it's very easy:
1) Perfectly morally upright. We do it all the time. It's called education and upbringing.
There is no moral difference between sitting someone down to explain why he should not stick his finger in a light socket, applying punishment and reward (say candy and grounding) to condition him not to do it and genetically engineering an aversion to sticking ones fingers into exposed electrical wiring. Either way you are going for the same goal and thus the morality of the act is the same.

The only moral implications (good or ill) beyond the intended goal will come from any side effects the methods used might posses. Like if the genetic engineering gives him cancer or something or your punishment involves breaking bones.

2) The conventional western response to this would be "allow it if it ain't hurting others". Personally I think this needs to be expanded to include not messing up the society as a whole. But again, this is a pretty common discussion these days that I think we could omit from this thread or tangent it off if we really want to.

3) This is going to depend on where this "want" originates from.
If it is because that person genuinely enjoys being exploited due to his brain chemistry being that way than it's basically a consensual BDSM relationship. So if that is the case than it's perfectly morally fine to exploit him just as long as you continually reaffirm that the consent still exists.
If it comes from an ulterior motive (like say the person needs the money and can't find a different job) than the moral obligation you speak of exists, at least in theory.

[Starglider]

Production of genetically engineered organisms with human-equivalent intelligence for the purpose of servitude is ethically horrible regardless of the methods used to ensure compliance. I would argue that even engineering creatures at the higher end of animal intelligence with substantially less free will than current pets (i.e. that there was no possibility of resisting an owner) is ethically wrong.

The situation with robots is more complicated, mainly because the concepts of 'sapience', 'sentience', 'free will', 'desire', 'wellbeing' etc are not well defined. For human and relatively humanlike organic brains we can generally get away with empathy-based, 'I don't know exactly how it works but I know it when I see it' definitions. This will also work for human uploads and near-human artificial neural network designs; the basic ethical concepts are present and the same concerns apply. For radically nonhuman minds, it is actually quite difficult to map existing ethics onto novel conceptual landscapes and draw sensible lines about where rights do and don't apply. It is evident that say a robot equivalent to 'Data' from Star Trek should have human-equivalent rights, it is evident that say a Google self-driving car is an object that does not require any rights or protections, the spectrum inbetween is uncharted and often quite counter-intuitive.

[Simon_Jester]

This is actually three questions. You're going to get bad answers because you're not asking them clearly.

1) Is it moral to program a person from childhood to enjoy a task of any kind, even a totally innocuous one?
[What about a beneficial one? Does it matter whether the programming is psychological (using a system of rewards and punishments) or technological (genetic engineering, drugs, etc)? Does the intensity of the programming (from mild inclination to unbreakable compulsion) change the morality of it?]

I'd say the things that matter are the strength of the programming, the nature of the programming, and (as Starglider points out) the purpose.

Fundamentally, it is wrong to treat other people the way you would treat a tool. People are not a means to an end, they are separate beings, full ethical agents in their own right.

Editing people so that you can use them as a tool more efficiently is therefore wrong. Editing them so someone else can thus use them is still wrong. Editing them in a way that you honestly believe will help them achieve self-fulfillment might not be wrong- but you don't make Jem'Hadar or clonetroopers that way.

In addition to this, it is wrong to inflict tortures on someone to force them to develop along the lines that suit your wishes. And it is wrong to remove from people their moral agency- their ability to choose to act in the manner they deem best based on a concept of right and wrong. These are issues with conditioning people overall.

2) Supposing someone wants to do something that they know full well does not promote their own health and well-being, is it best to allow them, encourage them, discourage them, or prevent them? What if they haven't decided whether they want to or not, yet?

Well, once again it's wrong to treat people like a tool. Taking extreme measures to stop OR encourage someone from making what is by nature a personal decision (whether to accept harm as the price of achieving a goal) can easily become very unethical.

3) Supposing someone wants to serve you to the point that they're willing to be exploited, is it moral to exploit them to the maximum extent possible, or do you have an obligation to treat them better than you really need to?

Here the 'don't use people as tools' issue REALLY kicks in. Your obligation to other people does not end the minute they sign away their right to resist your actions. Indeed, your obligations to other people are stronger then, because you cannot expect the other person to protect themselves from side effects of your actions.

On top of all this, you cannot deliberately create a situation that results in someone volunteering to be enslaved and abused, then wait for them to volunteer and go "oh my, if that's what you really want!" If you create a bad situation, you are still responsible for it, especially if you knew in advance what would happen and how things were going.

[Purple]

SJ, your argument rests, I must notice, on the idea of a constant morality system that applies to both sides of the arrangement. And in that context you are of course correct. But I do believe that the entire point of this thread is to pose a situation where that is in fact not the case.

In particular if a creature is for what ever reason wired in a way to enjoy things that we would call abuse than from its standpoint and thus its morality denying that thing is in fact abuse. You would after all be denying it pleasure just because you feel uncomfortable with the act involved in providing it. So whilst we might argue if it is right or wrong to create such a creature in the first place I would say that if its existence is taken as granted than it would have full right to argue that you have an obligation to suspend your morality for its benefit.

Just something to think about.

[Formless]

Is an intelligence that cannot, by its very nature, set goals for itself truly sentient? If not, then the answer to the question seems to me to be relatively simple:

No, you should not create a sentient being that is only capable by condition of its competencies to fight wars or any other singular purpose. That is essentially a torturous existence for any sentient being. You might have difficulty creating a being capable of attaining just any goal, as there are limits on what a creator of artificial life can accomplish, but that's an ethical complication of creating artificial life in the general case.

However, that leaves open the possibility of creating what are essentially simple minded machines that lack the cognitive complexity to be considered truly sentient-- in other words, machines which you can treat as tools because they literally are tools, albeit sophisticated ones. Tools which therefor must always operate under human supervision, with the human commanders of the weapons taking responsibility for whatever their creation's algorithms cause them to do, because the weapon itself cannot be attributed the mental quality. This does not appear to be something that can be accomplished using genetic engineering, however, due to the complexity in simplifying a brain without breaking it in a way that kills the organism. A robot of such qualities on the other hand seems quite feasible: so you can't ethically create clone troopers, but you could quite easily create battle droids without the same moral issues.

That just leaves open the problems inherent to any military buildup, namely the question "do I really need this weapon at all?" If its gratuitous and not in response to an active threat to your society or civilization, than the answer is an obvious "no." Its unethical because you are wasting resources on a military which serves no purpose but to wage wars of aggression.