Complex-Information Ethics Theory

Abstract

If ethics is of any interest to big historians, it might be primarily for analyzing the “ought to haves” and the “ought not to haves” of prior large scale human actions, e.g., does an agriculture-based lifestyle cause more harms to humans overall as compared with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle? However, big historians are also often concerned about the future events of Earth that can be influenced by humans, such as climate change, mass extinctions, and the predicted technological singularity. Because those concerns encompass both human and non-human complex systems such as the biosphere and possible future advanced artificial intelligence, big history requires an ethical framework that addresses anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric concerns and perspectives.