JamesAndrix comments on Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans) - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 October 2008 09:00PM

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Comment author: JamesAndrix 15 October 2008 07:15:13PM 0 points [-]

@Richard Hollerith

Stalin and may very well have been corrupted by power, that part of the theory may be right or wrong, but it isn't self serving. Coming from a culture that vilifies such corrupted leaders, we personally want to avoid being like them.

We don't want to think of ourselves as mass-murderers-for-real. So we declare ourselves too untrustworthy to decide to murder people, and we rule out that whole decision tree. We know we are mass-murderers-in-principle, but still we're decent people.

But maybe really we should shut up and multiply, and accept that in some situation we might really have to do something that makes us a monster.

Yes, when we're figuring out the probability that we'll save the world by violently gaining power, we have to adjust for the fact that we've evolved to find reasons to gain power. But we can't let that adjustment be driven by a fear of becoming Hitler.

If you do the math and this is the only reason you have not to kill people, then you're definitely flinching.

But if your mind increases your untrustworthiness until the math tells you you don't have to be like hitler, then you don't even know you're flinching, and the singularity is delayed because you're queasy.