Robot rights

[Drashner1]

We definitely agree in spirit if not in letter. What you're describing here I'd call "absolute morality", the idea that morals are some sort of external phenomenon to humanity (often touted as being universal or spiritual truths). I don't see any evidence that that exists. But it could be argued that objective morals exist given that innate tendency for specific social behaviours is an observed biological trait. Of course this in no way means they are "correct" or anything of the sort.

If we're defining biological behaviors as a form of morality in this context, then agreed.

Terragen understanding of developmental psychology and sociology is a lot more advanced than ours. It's possible they might be able to deeply ingrain moral systems in a society to subtly exist over long periods of time.

True - in fact, I'd suggest that 'memetics' as it is described within the setting (and possibly 'ontology' to some degree) would involve this sort of ingrained moral systems in some form. This might also explain the differences between the various empires and why 'defecting' from one empire to another might be one of the few things left that causes social and interpersonal stress since doing so presumably involves or implies a rejection of ones 'home' morality in favor of another. It might also mean that moving from one empire to another involves some degree of conditioning (possibly quite subtle). This might also tie into the issues behind the Version War to some degree, although I'm a bit fuzzy on that aspect of things.

This would be very important for generation ships IMO. Aside from overlooking the economic and ecological aspects of such a craft I think people often overlook the social engineering challenges. If your aim is for the craft to survive intact to the destination system then you have to consider what sort of culture and social institutions would be likely to last and keep the inhabitants alive. Exactly what that would be I don't know, but I suspect it would be very different to the assumptions of the stereotypical libertarian space cadet. You really don't want a system where it's possible to wake up and find someone now has a monopoly on the oxygen supply! Or that a revolution has punched a hole in the hull and there's not enough people alive to sustain the ark.

Agreed - note also that similar social engineering would have application for space habs below a certain size - think places like Haloist colonies and the like. Also, the various interstellar megacorps might have/have had some form of 'corporate religion' or at least 'corporate morality' to help make themselves work over interstellar distances.

A potentially very interesting aspect of this is what happened in the early days when this sort of thing was new, and presumably much less capable or durable, and a given social system went off the rails while the ship was in deep space or the like.

That would be interesting. A start would be to choose alien axioms and work outwards from there. For example: for a clade that has no concept of individuality and thus things like "I think therefore I am" make no sense.

Hm. We don't really do as much with group minds as we potentially could. Perhaps the 'morality of a hive mind' would be an interesting place to start from with this sort of thing? Although the exact from of group mind might need to be defined a bit first.

Todd