RE: Design principles and ethics

[Christopher Nelson]

> > >If it doesn't, it must refuse to run at all.
> > 
> > How does the child have any guarantees about anything?  In other 
> > words, how can it refuse to run?
> 
> It can't.  The thing is that if the child (which before 
> instantiation is just a bunch of numbers) should have a say 
> in this, then it must somehow be able to decide to "refuse" 
> something.  I meant to indicate that this is impossible.

Yes, but perhaps I wish to refuse the allow the program to run in
certain circumstances, and so I wish to write encode into the program
the means for detecting these situations.  You have taken that ability
from me.  You are constraining my actions, and removing my freedom.

If I wrote a program that I wished to keep for myself, I might encode
into it a way to make sure that only I am running it.  If someone then
steals my private program, what is essentially my property, they can
benefit from it without my consent.  You are enabling theft without
repercussion.

-={C}=-