Human Dignity and Bioethics

198 | Nick Bostrom
these imaginary cases, it seems more plausible that a significant loss
of Dignity as a Quality would occur among the copied individuals.
Perhaps this would be a pro tanto reason against the realization of
such scenarios.
Dignity Outside the Human World: Quiet Values
Dignity as a Quality is not necessarily confined to human beings and
collectives of human beings:
The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that
stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted
or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is
not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not
only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to
shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees
we know, they are ambassadors from another time. They have
the mystery of ferns that disappeared a million years ago into
the coal of the carboniferous era…. The vainest, most slaphappy
and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods,
goes under a spell of wonder and respect…. One feels the
need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns. 19
It is easy to empathize with the response that John Steinbeck describes,
and it fits quite well with Kolnai’s account of the characteristic
response to dignity.
Another example:
[One] of my colleagues [recounts a story] about once taking
his young son to a circus in town, and discovering a lone protestor
outside the tent silently holding aloft a sign that read
“Remember the Dignity of the Elephants.” It hit him
like a lightning bolt, he said. The protester’s point is surely an
intelligible one, though we could debate whether it is genuinely
reason enough to avoid all types of circuses. 20
would be the creation of many copies of the same sentient artificial intelligence.