Traditional ethical systems are formal models, and SEPP proves they are all incomplete. Utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics are all "simple" theories that lack the expressive power to provide clear answers for every high-entropy moral dilemma. This often leads to relativism or moral exhaustion. SEPP, however, does not just deconstruct; it provides the raw materials for a new, constructive ethical framework—an "Algorithmic Ethics" focused not on final answers, but on the properties of the process of moral reasoning itself.

The Prime Directive: Increase Expressive Power

If progress is defined as the algorithm of increasing our systems' capacity to manage complexity, then we can derive a fundamental ethical injunction: Act in a way that increases the expressive power of the systems you inhabit, both for yourself and for others.

This is not a simple rule like "maximize utility," but a meta-rule about how to build better rules. It reframes classic virtues and vices in informational terms:

• Good: Actions and systems that are "good" are those that increase complexity and expressive power.

  • Truth-telling and Honesty: Are ethically good because they inject high-fidelity information into our collective models of the world, increasing their expressive power. Lying degrades the model.
  • Education and Learning: Are primary virtues because they are the direct process of increasing an individual's internal model complexity and expressive power.
  • Empathy: Is the act of attempting to run a simulation of another person's complex internal model. It is a tool for increasing the expressive power of our social models.
  • Justice and Fairness: Are not abstract ideals, but the necessary conditions for a society to effectively process information from all its members. An unjust system that silences or ignores certain populations is informationally crippled; it has artificially reduced its own complexity and expressive power, making it brittle and prone to collapse.
  • Freedom (of speech, of thought): Is the fundamental prerequisite for the creative exploration of new formal systems. It is the social algorithm that allows for the generation of novel complexity, which is the raw material of progress.

• Evil: Actions and systems that are "evil" are those that destroy or simplify complexity and reduce expressive power.

  • Tyranny and Dogmatism: Are the ultimate evil in this framework. They are attempts to impose a single, simple, static formal system ($F_{ideology}$) on a complex reality and to violently eliminate any information or any person that represents a high-entropy deviation from that model. A totalitarian state is a system that is actively at war with complexity itself.
  • Deceit and Propaganda: Are evil because they deliberately inject low-quality, corrupting information into our collective models, reducing their expressive power and making them less capable of solving real-world problems.
  • Bigotry and Prejudice: Are the act of applying an overly simple, low-expressive-power model (a stereotype) to a complex human being, thereby denying their informational richness and individuality.

Solving Ethical Dilemmas: A Computational Approach

This framework does not provide a simple "ethical calculator" for solving dilemmas. Instead, it provides a procedure. When faced with a high-entropy moral problem where simple rules conflict, the correct action is the one that is most likely to preserve or increase the future adaptive capacity and expressive power of the system as a whole.

Consider a complex medical dilemma. The "algorithmic ethics" approach would not just apply a simple rule (e.g., "always preserve life"). It would ask:

• Which course of action allows the patient, the family, and the medical system to best process this complex situation?
• Which path preserves the most future optionality?
• Which decision is born from a more complex, nuanced, and empathetic model of the situation, rather than a simple, rigid one?

The "right" answer is often the one that acknowledges the incompleteness of our current models and chooses the path that allows for the most learning and adaptation in the future.

The Long-Term Future: Cosmic Engineering

This ethical framework has a cosmic and long-term dimension. If the universe is a computation that is constantly generating new complexity, and if life is the leading edge of that complexity generation, then our long-term ethical purpose is to be the custodians and accelerators of this process.

The ultimate goal is not a static utopia, but a continuous expansion of our collective expressive power. This means not just building better societies on Earth, but potentially engaging in "cosmic engineering"—the project of making the universe itself more complex, more interesting, and more "alive."

This provides a potential, non-theistic answer to the question of ultimate meaning. The meaning of our existence is to be the agents of complexification. We are the universe's model-builders, its artists, and its engineers. Our ethical imperative is to play this infinite game as well as we can, for as long as we can—to take the simple formal systems we inherit, and to leave behind a world that is more informationally rich, more computationally powerful, and more expressively profound than the one we found. The struggle against the heat-death of the universe is not just a physical one; it is an informational one. And our primary weapon in that struggle is our endless, SEPP-bounded, and gloriously incomplete search for knowledge.