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Wei_Dai comments on A Master-Slave Model of Human Preferences - Less Wrong
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I have difficulty treating this metaphor as a metaphor. As a thought experiment in which I run into these definitely non-human aliens, and I happen to have a positional advantage with respect to them, and I want to "help" them and must now decide what "help" means... then it feels to me like I want more detail.
Is it literally true that the slave is conscious and the master unconscious?
What happens when I tell the slave about the master and ask it what should be done?
Is it the case that the slave might want to help me if it had a positional advantage over me, while the master would simply use me or disassemble me?
Well, it's meant to have some human features, enough to hopefully make this toy ethical problem relevant to the real one we'll eventually have to deal with.
You can make that assumption if it helps, although in real life of course we don't have any kind of certainty about what is conscious and what isn't. (Maybe the master is conscious but just can't speak?)
I don't know. This is one of the questions I'm asking too.
Yes, depending on what values its master assigned to it at the time you meet it.
Not necessarily, because the master may gain status or power from other agents if it helps you.
And, conversely, the slave may choose to disassemble you even at high cost to itself out of altruism (with respect to something that the master would not care to protect).