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jimrandomh comments on Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute's Scary Idea (and Why I Don't Buy It) - Less Wrong
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Comments (432)
Human psychopaths are a counterexample to this claim, and they seem to be doing alright in spite of active efforts by the rest of humanity to detect and eliminate them.
'Detect and eliminate' or 'detect and affiliate with the most effective ones'. One or the other. ;)
There are no efforts by the rest of humanity to detect and eliminate the sort of psychopaths who understand it's in their own interests to cooperate with society.
The sort of psychopaths who fail to understand that, and act accordingly, typically end up doing very badly.
Why all the focus on psychopaths? It could be said that certain forms of autism are equally empathy-blinded, and yet people along that portion of the spectrum are often hugely helpful to the human race, and get along just fine with the more neurotypical.
No. There are two bad assumptions in your counterexample.
They are:
Human psychopaths are above the certain point of intelligence that I was talking about.
Human psychopaths are sufficiently long-lived for the consequences to be severe enough.
Hmmmm. #2 says that I probably didn't make clear enough the importance of the length of interaction.
You also appear to have the assumption that my argument is that the AGI fears detection of its unfriendly behavior and any consequences that humanity can apply. Humanity CANNOT apply sufficient negative consequences to a sufficiently powerful AGI. The severe consequences are all missed opportunity costs which means that the AGI is thereby sub-optimal and thereby less intelligent than is possible.
What sort of opportunity costs?
The AI can simulate humans if it needs them, for a lower energy cost than keeping the human race alive.
So, why should it keep the human race alive?
The underlying disorders of what is commonly referred to as psychopathy are indeed detectable. I also find it comforting that they are in fact disorders and that being evil in this fashion is not an attribute of an otherwise high-functioning mind. Psychopaths can be high-functioning in some areas, but a short interaction with them almost always makes it clear that there is something is.wrong.
Homosexuality was also a disorder once. Defining something as a sickness or disorder is a matter of politics as much as anything else.
Cat burning was also a form of entertainment once. Defining something as fun or entertainment is a matter of politics as much as anything else. The same goes for friendliness. I fear that once we pinpoint it, it'll be outdated.
What do you mean by psychopathy?
At least one sort of no-empathy person is unusually good at manipulating most people.
Everybody who is known to be a psychopath is a bad psychopath, by definition; a skilled psychopath is one who will not let people figure out that he's a psychopath.
Of course, this means that the existence of sufficiently skilled psychopath is, in everyday practice, unprovable and unfalsifiable (at least to the degree that we cannot tell the difference between a good actor and someone genuinely feeling empathy; I suppose you might figure out something by measuring people's brain activity while they watch a torture scene).
Even then it is far from definitive. Experienced doctors, for example, lose a lot the ability to feel certain kinds of physical empathy - their brains will look closer to a good actor's brain than that of a naive individual exposed to the same stimulus. That's just practical adaptation and good for patient and practitioner alike.
Considering the number of horror stories I've heard about doctors who just don't pay attention, I'm not sure you're right that doctors acting their empathy is good for patients.
Cite? I'm curious about where and when that study was done.
Don't know. Never saw it first hand - I heard it from a doctor.
Thanks for your reply, but I think I'm going to push for some community norms for sourcing information from studies, ranging from read the whole thing carefully to heard about it from someone.
Only on lesswrong - we look down our noses at people who take the word of medical specialists.
That doctor almost certainly wasn't speaking out of his specialist knowledge.
You don't have enough information to arrive at that level of certainty. He was not, for example, a general practitioner and I was not a client of his. I was actually working with him in medical education at the time. Come to think of it, bizarrely enough and by pure happenstance that does put the subject into the realm of his specialist knowledge.
I don't present that as a reason to be persuaded - I actually think not taking official status, particularly medicine related official status, seriously is a good thing. It is just a reply to your presumption.
While I don't expect you to take my (or his) word for anything I also wouldn't expect you to need to. This is exactly the finding I would expect based off general knowledge of human behavior. When people are constantly exposed to stimulus that is emotionally laden they will tend to become desensitized to it. There are whole schools of cognitive therapy based on this fact. If someone has taken on the role of a torturer then their emotional response to witnessing torture will be drastically altered. Either it will undergo extinction or the individual will be crippled with PTSD. This can be expected to apply even more when they fully identify with their role due to, for example, the hazing processes involved in joining military and paramilitary organisations.
I'll add that at particularly high levels of competence it makes very little difference whether you are a psychopath who has mastered the deception of others or a hypocrite (normal person) who has mastered deception of yourself.