WrongBot comments on SMBC comic: poorly programmed average-utility-maximizing AI - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (113)
Omelas is a goddamned paradise. Omelas without the tortured child would be better, yeah, but Omelas as described is still better than any human civilization that has ever existed. (For one thing, it only contains one miserable child.)
Well it seems to me they are trading N dust specks vs torture in Omelas. edit: Actually, I don't like Omelas [as example]. I think that miserable child would only make the society way worse, with the people just opting to e.g. kill someone when it ever so slightly results in increase in their personal expected utility. This child in Omelas puts them straight on the slippery slope, and making everyone aware of slippage makes people slide down for fun and profit.
Our 'civilization' though, of course, is a god damn jungle and so its pretty damn bad. It's pretty hard to beat on the moral wrongness scale, from first principles; you have to take our current status quo and modify it to get to something worse (or take our earlier status quo).
Your edit demonstrates that you really don't get consequentialism at all. Why would making a good tradeoff (one miserable child in exchange for paradise for everyone else) lead to making a terrible one (a tiny bit of happiness for one person in exchange for death for someone else)?