If human rights were to become a terminal value for the ASI, then the contingencies at the heart of deterrence theory become unjustifiable since they establish conditions under which those rights can be revoked, thus contradicting the notion of human rights as a terminal value.
I’m a bit unclear on what this is means. If you see preserving humans as a priority, why would threatening other humans to ensure strategic stability run against that? Countervalue targeting today works on the same principles, with nations that are ~aligned on human rights but willing to commit to violating them in retaliation to preserve strategic stability.
Assuming that issuing such threats isn’t itself a violation of human rights, if you genuinely see preserving humans as a terminal value, then you would not follow through on such a threat because a counterstrike would result in the opposite of what is demanded by your values. You could say that not following through on such a threat would weaken your strategic position due to a loss of credibility, but in this case you would be subordinating human preservation to credibility preservation, and thus to strategic calculus. If you sacrifice your terminal value for something else, then it wasn’t really your terminal value.
Two reasons for why deterrence works today are 1. countries do not treat human preservation as such as a terminal value, and 2. countries treat their adversary’s population as a negative value to the extent that it can be mobilized against them, thus making a counterstrike desirable.
I’m a bit unclear on what this is means. If you see preserving humans as a priority, why would threatening other humans to ensure strategic stability run against that? Countervalue targeting today works on the same principles, with nations that are ~aligned on human rights but willing to commit to violating them in retaliation to preserve strategic stability.
Assuming that issuing such threats isn’t itself a violation of human rights, if you genuinely see preserving humans as a terminal value, then you would not follow through on such a threat because a counterstrike would result in the opposite of what is demanded by your values. You could say that not following through on such a threat would weaken your strategic position due to a loss of credibility, but in this case you would be subordinating human preservation to credibility preservation, and thus to strategic calculus. If you sacrifice your terminal value for something else, then it wasn’t really your terminal value.
Two reasons for why deterrence works today are 1. countries do not treat human preservation as such as a terminal value, and 2. countries treat their adversary’s population as a negative value to the extent that it can be mobilized against them, thus making a counterstrike desirable.