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Downvoted for making a flippant, argument-based-on-fiction response to serious comment.
Here's a more serious response.
- Segregating the world, period, based on whatever, is impossible without a coercive power that the existing nations of earth would consider illegal. Before you could forcefully migrate a large percentage of the world's humans you'd have to win a war with whatever portion of the UN stood against you.
- If you could do it, no one would admit to having any values other than those which got to live in/own the nicest places/stuff/be with their family / not be with their competitors/whatever. The technology to determine everyone's values does not exist.
- If you somehow derived everyone's values and split them by these, you would probably be condemning large segments of the population to misery (Lots of people's values are built around living around people who don't share them.), and there would be widespread resentment. The invincible force you used to overcome objection 1 would be tested within a generation.
In response to
Open thread, Oct. 10 - Oct. 16, 2016
Is there a good rebuttal to why we don't donate 100% of our income to charity? I mean, as an explanation tribality / near - far are ok, but is there a good justification post-hoc?
"Don't wanna", shading into "Make Me" if they press. Anyone trying to tell you what to do isn't your Real Dad! (Unless they are, in which case maybe try and figure out what's going on.)
I looked into some of the most obvious objections. Some have reasonable answers (why not just kill yourself?), some others are based on a (to me) crazy assumption: that the original state of the biosphere pre-humans somehow is more valuable than the collective experience of the human race.
To which I don't just disagree, but think it's a logic error, since values exist only in the mind of those who can compute it, whatever it is.
grumble grumble...
Look, I'm not pro-"Kill All Humans", but I don't think that last step is correct.
Bob can prefer that the human race die off and the earth spin uninhabited forever. It makes him evil, but there's no "logic error" in that, any more than there is in Al's preference that humanity spread out throughout the stars. They both envision future states and take actions that they believe will cause those states.
In my view, segregating the world by values would actually be really good. People who have very different belief systems should not try or be forced to live in the same country.
Yes, those with my values will live here, in Gondor. Your folks can live other there, in Mordor. Our citizens will no longer come into contact and conflict with one another, and peace will reign forever.
What, these segregated regions THEMSELVES come into conflict? Absurd. What would you even call a conflict that was between large groups of people? That could never happen. Everyone who shares my value system knows that lots of people would die, and we all agree that nothing could be worth that.
In response to
Politics Is Upstream of AI
This article is an example of looking at the world pragmatically, and acknowledging an actual truth. Kudos to the writers.
It reminds me of the scene at the start of Bad Boyz 2, where the drug kingpin has a giant pile of paper cash, and rats are nesting in it.
Kingpin: "This is a STUPID problem to have." ... Kingpin: "But it IS a problem. Hire exterminators."
Similarly, politics getting in the way of transforming the world with its irksome interest in transforming the world is exactly the sort of thing that clear eyed futurists need to figure on.
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Linkposts now live!
Thanks for this. This was a smart change, and I doubt you were paid for it. I appreciate it.
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 26 - Oct. 02, 2016
I've been meditating lately on a possibility of an advanced artificial intelligence modifying its value function, even writing some excrepts about this topic.
Is it theoretically possible? Has anyone of note written anything about this -- or anyone at all? This question is so, so interesting for me.
My thoughts led me to believe that it is theoretically possible to modify it for sure, but I could not come to any conclusion about whether it would want to do it. I seriously lack a good definition of value function and understanding about how it is enforced on the agent. I really want to tackle this problem from human-centric point, but i don't really know if anthropomorphization will work here.
On the one hand, there is no magical field that tells a code file whether the modifications coming into it are from me (human programmer) or the AI whose values that code file is. So, of course, if an AI can modify a text file, it can modify its source.
On the other hand, most likely the top goal on that value system is a fancy version of "I shall double never modify my value system", so it shouldn't do it.
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 26 - Oct. 02, 2016
I was at the vet a while back; one of my dogs wasn't well (she's better now). The vet took her back, and after waiting for a few minutes, the vet came back with her.
Apparently there were two possible diagnosis: let's call them x and y, as the specifics aren't important for this anecdote.
The vet specifies that, based on the tests she's run, she cannot tell which diagnosis is accurate.
So I ask the vet: which diagnosis has the higher base rate among dogs of my dog's age and breed?
The vet gives me a funny look.
I rephrase: about how many dogs of my dog's breed and age get diagnosis x versus diagnosis y, without running the tests you did?
The vet gives me another funny look, and eventually replies: that doesn't matter.
My question for Lesswrong: Is there a better way to put this? Because I was kind of speechless after that.
So, it seems like there could be 2 things going on here:
1: Maybe, in your Vet's mind, she is telling you "We can't tell if this is A or B", and you are asking "But which is it?", and by refusing to answer she is doubling down on the whole "We don't know A or B" situation.
Like, I know what you mean is what you actually said, but normal people don't say that, and the Vet is trying to reiterate that you do not know which of A or B this is. She is trying to avoid saying "mostly A", and you saying "ok, treat A", and then the dog dies of B, and you are like "You said A, you fraud, I'm suing you!".
2: The vet honestly doesn't know the answer to your question. She is a person who executes the procedures in his/her manuals, not a person who follows the news about every animal's frequent ailments. In her world if an animal shows A you do X, if an animal shows B you do Y. Your question is outside of her realm of curiosity.
As far as another way to phrase this, I'd go with "Well, which do you think it is, A or B?". The vet's answer ought to be informed by her experience, even if it isn't explicitly phrased as "well, mostly this is what dogs suffer from". If she reiterates that there is no way to know, I'd figure this was a first case, CYA situation, and stress that I wouldn't be mad if she was wrong.
In response to
Rationality Quotes September 2016
Eh, it's not like there is a penalty for having a quotes thread with few submissions. Interested people will click them when they show up, others won't.
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Okay, I obviously don't mean that we should value-segregate people at the point of a gun. I mean that if people naturally want to migrate towards geopolitical communities that better fit their particular value system, this is probably a good thing.
Yeah, I agree that people being able to travel freely and choose where they live is good.