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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.
Well now I see we disagree at a much more fundamental level.
There is nothing inherently sinister about "optimization". Humans are optimizers in a sense, manipulating the world to be more like how we want it to be. We build sophisticated technology and industries that are many steps removed from our various end goals. We dam rivers, and build roads, and convert deserts into sprawling cities. We convert the resources of the world into the things we want. That's just what humans do, that's probably what most intelligent beings do.
The definition of F... (read more)