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Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes Thread April 2015 - Less Wrong
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His ethical guideline has nothing to do with how close humanity is to extinction.
However, if practiced diligently, it can bring humanity to extinction in a few generations from any population size.
Except I already wrote:
You don't even have to apply the principle of charity, you could just look at what I had literally written.
Nonsense. Most humans don't live in a warzone at any time now. And followed in extreme poverty, this principle would reduce local malthusian traps and probably reduce poverty; at least the suffering of children from poverty.
This is a questionable claim. Do you have any evidence to support it?
It's a hypothetical -- there is no evidence for or against it as it never happened and is highly unlikely to happen.
But let me point out that it sets up a downward feedback loop.
AI's never been developed before either, but that hasn't stopped people from trying to forecast the future, or at least enumerate likely scenarios. You were making a claim about a causal link: "following HedonicTreader's guideline will cause humanity to go extinct." Either this link exists or it does not, and you don't get to back out of providing evidence just because the situation is a hypothetical.
What's the loop?
(EDIT: Upon reflection, I feel I should clarify that I'm not actually disagreeing with you here. I'm slightly more sympathetic to HedonicTreader's position than yours at the moment, but with some convincing, that could easily change. My questions should be interpreted more as requests for information than as rhetorical challenges.)
I use the word "evidence" to mean empirical evidence, that is, evidence from reality. Such does not exist in this case. Arguments from analogy, logic, etc. are not evidence.
The worsening of conditions triggers a major contraction of population which worsens the conditions further (contemporary economies take contraction badly and at sufficiently low population numbers and densities advanced technology becomes problematic) which triggers further contraction of the population...