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entirelyuseless comments on Open thread, Oct. 10 - Oct. 16, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (147)
I'm not claiming that at all. I may be wrong about many things. It's irrelevant.
It is not irrelevant. You said, "With those two conditions, the negative parts of human values are entirely eliminated." That certainly meant that things like ISIS opinions would be eliminated. I agree in that particular case, but there are many other things that you would consider negative which will not be eliminated. I can probably guess some of them, although I won't do that here.
See my other comment for more clarification on how CEV would eliminate negative values.
I read that. You say there, "Your stated example was ISIS. ISIS is so bad because they incorrectly believe... If they knew all the arguments for and against religion, then their values would be more like ours." As I said, I agree with you in that case. But you are indeed saying, "it is because I am right and when they know better they will know I was right." And that will not always be true, even if it is true in that case.
I never claimed I am right about everything. I don't need to be right about everything. I would love to have an AI show me what I am wrong about and show me the perfect set of values.
And most importantly, I'm saying that this process would result in the optimal set of values for everyone. Do you disagree?
Yes, I disagree. I think that "babyeater values are different from human values" differs only in degree from "my values are different from your values." I do not think there is a reasonable chance that I will turn out to be wrong about this, just like there is no reasonable chance that if we measure our heights with sufficient accuracy, we will turn out to have different heights. This is still another reason why we should speak of "babyeater morality" and "human morality," namely because if morality is inconsistent with variety, then morality does not exist.
That said, I already said that I would not be willing to wipe out non-human values from the cosmos, and likewise I have no interest in imposing my personal values on everything else. I think these are really the same thing, and in that sense wanting to impose a CEV on the universe is being a "racist" in relation to human beings vs other intelligent beings.
People may have different values (although I think deep down we are very similar, humans sharing all the same brains and not having that much diversity.) Regardless, CEV should find the best possible compromise between our different values. That's literally the whole point.
If there is a difference in our values, the AI will find the compromise that satisfies us the most (or dissatisfies us the least.) There is no alternative, besides not compromising at all and just taking the values of a single random person. From behind the veil of ignorance, the first is definitely preferable.
I don't think this will be so bad. Because I don't think our values diverge so much, or that decent compromises are impossible between most values. I imagine that in the worst case, the compromise will be that two groups with different values will have to go their separate ways. Live on opposite sides of the world, never interact, and do their own thing. That's not so bad, and a post-singularity future will have more than enough resources to support it.
No one is suggesting we wipe out non-human values. But we have yet to meet any intelligent aliens with different values. Once we do so, we may very well just apply CEV to them and get the best compromise of our values again. Or we may keep our own values, but still allow them to live separately and do their own thing, because we value their existence.
This reminds me a lot of the post value is fragile. It's ok to want a future that has different beings in it, that are totally different than humans. That doesn't violate my values at all. But I don't want a future that has beings die or suffer involuntarily. I don't think it's "value racist" to want to stop beings that do value that.
"Once we do so, we may very well just apply CEV to them and get the best compromise of our values again. Or we may keep our own values, but still allow them to live separately and do their own thing, because we value their existence."
The problem I have with what you are saying is that these are two different things. And if they are two different things in the case of the aliens, they are two different things in the case of the humans.
The CEV process might well be immoral for everyone concerned, since by definition it is compromising a person's fundamental values. Eliezer agrees this is true in the case of the aliens, but he does not seem to notice that it would also be true in the case of the humans.
In any case, I choose in advance to keep my own values, not to participate in changing my fundamental values. But I am also not going to impose those on anyone else. If you define CEV to mean "the best possible way to keep your values completely intact and still not impose them on anyone else," then I would agree with it, but only because we will be stipulating the desired conclusion.
That does not necessarily mean "living separately". Even now I live with people who, in every noticeable way, have values that are fundamentally different from mine. That does not mean that we have to live separately.
In regard to the last point, you are saying that you don't want to eliminate all potential aliens, but you want to eliminate ones with values that you really dislike. I think that is basically racist.
There is some truth in it, however, insofar as in reality, for reasons I have been saying, beings that have fundamental desires for others to suffer and die are very unlikely indeed, and any such desires are likely to be radically qualified. To that degree you are somewhat right: desires like that are in fact evil. But because they are evil, they cannot exist.
The world we live in is "immoral" in that it's not optimized towards anyone's values. Taking a single person's values would be "immoral" to everyone else. CEV, finding the best possible compromise of values, would be the least immoral option, on average. Optimize the world in a way that dissatisfies the least people the least amount.
Right. I said that's the realistic worst case, when no compromise is possible. I think most people have similar enough values that this would be rare.
I don't necessarily want to kill them, but I would definitely stop them from hurting other beings. Imagine you came upon a race of aliens that practiced a very cruel form of slavery. Say 90% of their population was slaves, and the slave owning class treated regularly tortured and overworked them. Would you stop them, if you could? Is that racist? What about the values of the slaves?
I think optimizing anything is always immoral, exactly because it means imposing things that you should not be imposing. It is also the behavior of a fanatic, not a normal human being; that is the whole reason for the belief that AIs would destroy the world, namely because of the belief that they would behave like fanatics instead of like intelligent beings.
In the case of the slave owning race, I am quite sure that slavery is not consistent with their fundamental values, even if they are practicing it for a certain time. I don't admit that values are arbitrary, and consequently you cannot assume (at least without first proving me wrong about this) that any arbitrary value could be a fundamental value for something.
If ithey find it immoral in the sense of crossing a line that should never be crossed, then they are not going to play. I don't think the morals=values theory can tell you where the bright lines are, and that is why I think rules and a few other things are involved in ethics.
Consider a harder case....a society that is ruthless in crushing any society that offers any rivalry or opposition to them, but otherwise leaves people alone. Since that is a survival promoting strategy, you can't argue that it would just be selected out. But it doesn't seem as ethical as more conciliatory approaches.
"It doesn't seem as ethical as more conciliatory approaches." I agree. That is because it is not the best strategy. It may not be the worst possible strategy, but it is not the best. And since the people engaging in that strategy, their ability to think about it, over time, will lead them to adopt better strategies, namely more conciliatory approaches.
I don't say that the good is achieved by selection alone. It is also achieved by the use of reason, by things that use reason.