paulfchristiano comments on Shut up and do the impossible! - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 October 2008 09:24PM

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Comment author: paulfchristiano 23 December 2010 12:25:59AM 0 points [-]

Suppose you had an extremely compelling argument that boxing a transhuman is not a good idea because they could escape (being cleverer than a human pretending to be a transhuman). Then you could combine that argument with a claim about real world consequences.

Comment author: ata 23 December 2010 12:43:57AM *  2 points [-]

True, but if he knew of an additional "extremely compelling argument that boxing a transhuman is not a good idea because they could escape", Eliezer would have just posted it publicly, being that that's what he was trying to convince people of by running the experiments in the first place.

...unless it was a persuasive but fallacious argument, which is allowed under the terms of the experiment, but not allowed under the ethics he follows when speaking as himself. That is an interesting possibility, though probably a bit too clever and tricky to pass "There's no super-clever special trick to it."

Comment author: paulfchristiano 23 December 2010 12:51:27AM 0 points [-]

If you are creative you can think of many situations where he wouldn't publicize such an argument (my first response to this idea was the same as yours, although the first explanation I came up with was different). That said, I agree its not the most likely possibility given everything we know.