oooo comments on A brief history of ethically concerned scientists - Less Wrong

68 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 09 February 2013 05:50AM

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Comment author: CCC 08 February 2013 08:45:53PM 9 points [-]

There are several ways to nullify, or even reverse progress:

  • Falsify some hard-to-duplicate results in a way that calls previous results into doubt
  • Subtly sabotage one or more experiments that will be witnessed by others
  • Enthusiastically pursue some different avenue of research, persuading others to follow you
  • Leave research entirely, taking up a post as an undergraduate physics lecturer at some handy university

There would have to be extremely good reason to try one of the top two; since they involve not only removing results, but actually poison the well for future researchers.

Comment author: oooo 09 July 2013 12:31:49AM *  0 points [-]

Enthusiastically pursue some different avenue of research, persuading others to follow you

I am reading Kaj Sotala's latest paper "Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey" and I was struck by this thread regarding ethically concerned scientists. MIRI is following this option by enthusiastically pursuing FAI (slightly different avenue of research) and trying to persuade and convince others to do the same.

EDIT: My apologies -- I removed the second part of my comment proactively because it dealt with hypothetical violence of radical ethically motivated scientists.

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