Regardless, slavery was and is one of the most reprehensible inventions of mankind. A man who is not free and has no means by which to change his life and realize his dreams, can only vegetate. A human being or a living being that has desires and is aware of his condition can suffer far beyond just physical pain. Look at the case of Martin Luther King, a leader in the fight for civil rights in the United States. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his fight for equal rights of blacks and whites in the United States. He preached nonviolence, just like another great defender of freedom, the Indian Mahatma Gandhi. Luther King was assassinated in 1968, but he won his fight. Racism has lost ground in the United States and around the world. Luther King once said: "I have a dream my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by color of their skin but by content of their character."

A rebellion of replicants occurred in off-earth colonies. The replicants were programmed to fight, but had acquired feelings and desires. They finally began to want a life that wasn't completely limited by their genetic programming.

The humans created an elite squad to capture and destroy these androids, the Blade Runners. These android hunters called the act of killing a replicant "retirement", and not execution. The film focuses on the pursuit of an android hunter, Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, of four replicants: Roy, Leon, Pris and Zhora. They return to Los Angeles to try to find the genetic engineer who created them. The lifespan of the four was coming to an end. They fought for the chance to live longer than their programs permitted. It's interesting also to note that in the original version of the film, Rick himself was also an android with genetic programming that was not limited to a few years of life.

Lets address a few key issues. Can ethics exist where everything is already decided? We should begin by remembering what we understand ethics to be. We can define ethics as a set of values that tells us how to live, or in other words, how to behave when faced with choices. Ethics is linked to the morals of our society. Ethics has to do with what we consider good or evil.

Ethics is linked to the purposes that we propose for humanity, for our public life or our profession. A doctor is ethical when he performs his mission. What is the mission of doctors? To alleviate pain and save people. When a doctor does not carry out this mission, when he has the means to, he is being unethical. A doctor should strive to save every human being, regardless of how he judges that person.

Returning to the question: can ethics exist where everything is already decided? Let's look at why this question is important. What does the condition "everything is already decided" mean to our discussion of ethics? There are various implications. The most important are those linked to the idea of destiny and free will. First, let's DISCUSS the issue of destiny. In the film Blade Runner, the android's destiny was sealed. His death would occur at the end of precisely 4 years. Nothing that he could do could change this destiny, except if he changed his own genetic programming.

Here I am presupposing that the android is a living being and, given his situation, that he is a slave. What's the big difference between a machine and an android? Is a metal robot alive? Can a computer made of metal components and sand develop desires and passions? Regardless of whether we agree on the differences between androids built from genetic engineering and those made of computers and metal, if both are aware of their condition and develop feelings, we can say that they are beings capable of autonomous life. When we interfere in your life and make you do things that you don't want, we are enslaving you. Live conscious organisms should not be kept from leading a free life.

Autonomy is the quality of being autonomous. According to Professor Marilena Chaui, AUTONOMOUS is a Greek word derived from AUTOS (I myself) and NOMOS (law, normal or rule). It means that a person who is free is governed by his own rules. The opposite idea is HETERONOMOUS, or in other words, someone who receives norms and rules from others. HETERO, in Greek, means other.

There are many possibilities in the relationship between destiny and autonomy. Let's choose a path. If the destiny of a person is defined, he will show little interest in choosing a path. If someone believes that everything is already written by some superior force, this becomes an ethical relief. A person acted in such a way because 'it was destiny.' On the other hand, even if the person believes in DESTINY and PREDESTINATION, this does not keep them from acting ethically when something has not been predetermined. If there is just an ounce of autonomy, people can act ethically. What is important is to seek freedom and believe that we can choose our own path. This is how we can be AUTONOMOUS. Like AUTONOMOUS people, we can choose between good and evil, just and injustice, and solidarity and egoism.

Returning to the film Blade Runner: in a moving scene, the replicant Roy, a superstrong android built genetically for battle in the place of humans, in a fight with Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford), has an opportunity to kill his hunter. What is interesting is that even though he knows that he only has a few seconds of life left-since his four year life span is running out-he decides to save Rick from falling from a height that would certainly kill him. This is how an android predestined to die acted, by saving his own hunter. What Roy wanted was to live without the nightmare of a countdown. He wanted uncertainty and freedom to decide about his own life. He wanted autonomy.

Would it be right for an android to want to become human? Wasn't he built simply to be a slave to humans? He shouldn't be able to think, but how would it be possible to control artificial intelligence? Let's start with the idea of artificial intelligence.

Can an intelligent being that can create objectives, dream and is capable of having desires be considered a living being? What is the essence of life? There are lesser living beings than the androids in the Blade Runner film, aren't there? Aren't amoeba and bacteria living organisms? Amoebas and bacteria do not have morals or ethics. Why? These are complex issues. What is important to note is that to have morals you must be aware of good and evil. Animals, in general, act according to their position in the food chain. A lion is not an "evil being" simply because it devours a gazelle. He simply needs to eat. Furthermore, a lion does not act as a conscience being and generator of culture.

What is necessary for there to be ethics? First, there is more to ethics than just being alive. A previous moral culture is an essential condition for ethics. What? That's right, man is a being capable of ethics because he has morality. Morality is the concept of what good and evil are for society. Is that it???? No, there's more. Ethical beings must have CONSCIENCE to be capable of judging what is a morally acceptable action. And this leads us to the question: can an organism built artificially (an android, for example) which is capable of understanding a culture and its morality, as well as having the capacity to analyze facts, develop an ethical spirit? We expect that androids and cyborgs will share our ethics. But, wait a minute... THIS IS SERIOUS. Why would man develop live biological organisms (even if artificial) if it wasn't to use them for menial, heavy, repetitive or dangerous work?

Free will is the capacity to be autonomous, or in other words, the ability to decide for oneself. There are intellectuals who believe that humans are born with their destiny completely determined by a superior force. In this case, it would be very difficult to talk about free will, and the possibility of judging and deciding which path to take.

Even in prison, even enslaved, we can develop our capacity to judge and decide what is best for us and our society. To exercise free will requires that people have a conscience and their own will.

Can a slave have free will? Is he not imprisoned? This is a difficult question. A slave or an android who is conscious of its condition and state of being can make choices. One of them would be to run away and try to be autonomous. In an effort to overcome his condition as a slave. In a certain way, this is what the replicants in Blade Runner tried to do by rebelling.

Let's go to a completely different example. Let's look at the life of a drug addict. A person that becomes addicted to any drug first loses his freedom. What do you mean? You got it. HE LOSES HIS FREEDOM, precisely because he becomes dependent on a chemical substance. Don't you remember? An autonomous being transforming into a heteronomous being. He becomes a slave to a substance. He loses part of his freedom. On the other hand, when he is free, while there is still a little free will left, he could try to break free of his prison.

Living autonomously has its price. What is the price of autonomy and free will? The best answer is that the price we pay for autonomy is precisely that needed to make decisions about our lives and our destiny. We are free when we are not predestined. We can build our future.

It is obvious that not everything happens according to plan, since we live in a society, but we can try to guide and improve our lives. We can try paths and choose situations that we don't want to experience. We can try an ethical life or an unethical life. In the end, if you govern yourself you have to decide about where you're going and how to live.

We've now arrived at an important and crucial point. Let's not talk about how we conduct our own lives, about the issue of INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY. But what about the autonomy of our society?

Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy in May of 1469. He was an intellectual of his time.Niccol Machiavelli is remembered today, mainly for the book he wrote called The Prince. It was written like a manual on the workings of power and politics. The book was dedicated to the Medici family, which dominated Florence, in 1513, when the book was written. In the centuries since, political scholars observe that the theory on power changed starting with Machiavelli. Others began using the word Machiavellian to describe a type of behavior.

Machiavellism is, in general, a term used to talk about traitorous, cunning or deceitful acts. It is also common to use this word to describe a crafty politician who acts in bad faith. On the other hand, these definitions take away from the fundamental role of Machiavelli's work, which was to shed light on the practice of power between men. Let's read a passage from The Prince, the most important work by Machiavelli. Pay close attention, because this was written in the 15th century:

"(...) todo legislador sábio e animado pelo único desejo de servir, não seus interesses pessoais, mas os do público, de trabalhar, não para os seus próprios herdeiros, mas pela pátria comum, nada deve poupar, para ser ele o único a possuir completa autoridade. E nunca um espírito esclarecido repreenderá aquele que haja cometido uma ação, mesmo ilegal, para fundar um reino ou constituir uma república. É justo, quando as ações de um homem o acusam, que o resultado o justifiquem, e, quando esse resultado é feliz (...). Só se devem repreender as ações que têm por meta destruir e não reparar." Let's try to decipher this phrase. But first you need to know that Machiavelli wanted to unify Italy, or in other words, create a single country. This is why he spoke of creating a principality or a republic. What can we point to as unethical in this passage from the book by Machiavelli? Note that he wants to defend the interests of the public and not private interests of any politician. This is praiseworthy. But note the phrases "spare no effort," "even if illegal" and "when this result is advantageous." Here we can interpret that Machiavelli believed that THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS.

Does it matter how we achieve a goal or defend a good cause? Are all means valid? These are not easy questions to answer. Before we try, let's learn a little more about Machiavelli. This scholar made it clear that politics should be analyzed FOR WHAT IT IS, and not FOR WHAT IT SHOULD BE. Machiavelli believed that men were capable of anything to stay in power or to achieve it. This is why Machiavelli's political theory is also called POLITICAL REALISM. Machiavelli is not Machiavellian. He is a scholar of power and, as such, tried to show that power had its own ethics.

Does power have its own ethics? For Machiavelli, power is self-expanding. What does this mean? To gain a better understanding, we must analyze the facts and ideas. It would be much better if our societies had governments composed only of ethical people. In fact, throughout history we can find politicians and rulers who were extremely just and ethical. But we also know that many politicians want power to achieve something else, or in other words, they do not act morally or ethically.

Machiavelli's book teaches us that if there are moral behaviors, politics also experiences countless immoral behaviors (according to our values). This means that we should observe THE ACTIONS AS WELL AS THE INTENTIONS of politicians.

Let's return now to the idea that the ends justify the means. This is one of the most difficult issues, and not only in politics. Can dubious or unethical means be employed to defend noble causes? What's wrong with using unethical means to defend good things? Where's the problem in that?

The problem is mainly in the fact that an unethical path is unlikely to lead to a FULLY GOOD and morally defensible result. Moreover, there is the question that Aristotle raised. Let's return to a passage from our white belt lesson. Read carefully:

A doctor can be technically outstanding and still be an unethical professional. An ethical doctor is one that fulfills the final objectives of medicine in all of his actions. What is the purpose of medicine? Mainly, to save lives and alleviate pain. When the doctor refuses to fulfill the purpose of his profession he is being unethical. The reason why is unimportant. If a patient has no money and he does not help them, is the doctor acting ethically? No. Because ethics cannot be suspended for a specific situation.

LET'S CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING PROBLEM. And what if Machiavelli was a hacker and was observing the political crisis in Brazil? What might happen? Let's suppose that he was in a position to take advantage of a failure in security and break into a computer of an important aide to a corrupt congressman (it doesn't matter who, this is HYPOTHETICAL). In addition to copying all the e-mails to discover more proof about vote buying and fraud in public bidding, he installs a spyware program that allows him to follow every movement in the computer. After successfully monitoring the computer he broke into, he discovers e-mails from an official at the Central Bank. This official describes a serious situation in a very important private bank in Brazil. This bank is about to go under, go bankrupt. Well, what's the problem? What should the hacker do? First, our hacker acted like a CRACKER. He should not have broken into the a computer because this is a criminal act. Furthermore, one crime does not justify another.

Breaking into a computer for a good cause is the same as saying the ends justify the means. A society without rules can generate countless dangerous conflicts. What you believe fully justifiable, may not be so for others. To prevent society and people from tearing each other to shreds and embarking on a endless dispute, we have the LAW and the LEGAL SYSTEM. If we do not agree with the laws, we should try to change them by creating campaigns and demanding changes from the legislature. If each one took justice into their own hands, society would be in a constant state of war. In this situation, the meek and the weak would lose. This is completely unjust.

And the dilemma of the bank that is about to go under? The dilemma is as follows: if our hacker spreads the news that the bank is going under, he could initiate a RUN ON THE BANK and force the bank to go out of business. A run on the bank is a situation where people, unsure of the soundness of a bank, withdraw all the money that they have in their accounts. They want to make sure they don't lose their money if the bank goes under. What's the problem? It's like that expression, damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you don't tell the press, our hacker could be accused of hiding information important to the public. People have the right to know whether their bank is solvent or not. Or do they? On the other hand, if you were an account holder in this bank wouldn't you run to withdraw your money? Sure, the risk of a run on the bank does exist.

But there's another problem. A typical problem of the press. Many times they receive information but they don't know whether it's reliable are not. Ethical journalists corroborate the information they publish. Corroborate means to confirm, to see if the information is true. How would our hacker confirm information of this type? It could perhaps be a bluff, part of a game of corruption. So now what? What should our hacker do?

Acting ethically in complex situations with imperfect information can be very difficult. This is why Aristotle, in his book Micomachean Ethics, said that it was important to distinguish vice from virtue. Instead of acting with imprudence or stubbornness, which are vices of excess, or with cowardice, a vice of deficiency, we should act with courage, which is a virtue. But what about our Machiavellian hacker? At this point, he is probably sorry that he had broken into the computer and discovered something he didn't want to. He would have liked to have found only proof of corruption which he could have then forwarded on to the press anonymously. Now he will have to decide what to do. Either hold onto the information and prevent a possible and undesirable bank run or disclose the information, giving the press the means by which to demand explanations from the Central Bank and that measures be taken to keep account holders from losing their money?

Despite the risk, our hacker should opt for transparency and disclosure of the truth. He should give this information to a serious investigative journalist. Attention. Not all means are just to achieve an end. A society can only be governed autonomously if it is FREE AND DEMOCRATIC. Democracy is a social model. What does this mean?

DEMOCRACIES are ways we govern our societies. In a democracy, power is determined by a majority and not the strongest or the richest. I get it. I get it. The rich have the means to use power of money to exercise power over society. This is true. But a democracy allows aware citizens to choose the politicians they believe best and not those who have the most money.

We see that the price we pay for autonomy is precisely that needed to make decisions about our lives and our destiny. We are free when we are not predestined. We can build our future. For our society to be autonomous, we have to pay the price by PARTICIPATING IN IT. Antnio Vieira wrote "THERE ARE NO ENDS WITHOUT MEANS." Regardless of the many interpretations, we will use this thought to defend that THERE IS NO AUTONOMY IN OUR SOCIETY WITHOUT ACTIVE PARTICIPATION BY CITIZENS. Since politics determines how our society is run, so that as people we can continue free and autonomous, we must follow what our politicians are doing. We need to be citizens. We need to participate in the running of our society. We need to be alert to the corruption of ideas and people.

In the Black Belt lesson, we will learn that one of the main principles of hacker ethics is defending freedom. To have a free society we must have transparency and control over its codes. But this is another story...

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