I’m uncertain between conflict theory and mistake theory, and think it partly depends on metaethics, and therefore it’s impossible to be sure which is correct in the foreseeable future—e.g., if everyone ultimately should converge to the same values, then all of our current conflicts are really mistakes. Note that I do often acknowledge conflict theory, like in this list I have “Value differences/conflicts between humans”.
It’s also quite possible that it’s really a mix of both, that some of the conflicts are mistakes and others aren’t.
In practice I tend to focus more on mistake-theoretic ideas/actions. Some thoughts on this:
If conflict theory is true, then I’m kind of screwed anyway, having invested little human and social capital into conflict-theoretic advantages, as well as not having much talent or inclination in that kind of work in the first place.
I do try not to interfere people doing conflict-theoretic work (on my side), e.g., not berate them for having “bad epistemics” or not adopting mistake theory lenses, etc.
It may be nearly impossible to convince some decision makers that they’re making mistakes, but perhaps others are more open to persuasion, e.g. people in charge of or doing ground-level work on AI advisors or AI reasoning.
Maybe I can make a stronger claim that a lot of people are making mistakes, given current ethical and metaethical uncertainty. In other words, people should be unsure about their values, including how selfish or altruistic they should be, and under this uncertainty they shouldn’t be doing something like trying to max out their own power/resources at the expense of the commons or by incurring societal-level risks. If so, then perhaps an AI advisor who is highly philosophically competent can realize this too and convince its principle of the same, before it’s too late.
(I think this is probably the first time I’ve explicitly written down the reasoning in 4.)
I think we need a different plan.
Do you have any ideas in mind that you want to talk about?
I’m uncertain between conflict theory and mistake theory, and think it partly depends on metaethics, and therefore it’s impossible to be sure which is correct in the foreseeable future—e.g., if everyone ultimately should converge to the same values, then all of our current conflicts are really mistakes. Note that I do often acknowledge conflict theory, like in this list I have “Value differences/conflicts between humans”. It’s also quite possible that it’s really a mix of both, that some of the conflicts are mistakes and others aren’t.
In practice I tend to focus more on mistake-theoretic ideas/actions. Some thoughts on this:
If conflict theory is true, then I’m kind of screwed anyway, having invested little human and social capital into conflict-theoretic advantages, as well as not having much talent or inclination in that kind of work in the first place.
I do try not to interfere people doing conflict-theoretic work (on my side), e.g., not berate them for having “bad epistemics” or not adopting mistake theory lenses, etc.
It may be nearly impossible to convince some decision makers that they’re making mistakes, but perhaps others are more open to persuasion, e.g. people in charge of or doing ground-level work on AI advisors or AI reasoning.
Maybe I can make a stronger claim that a lot of people are making mistakes, given current ethical and metaethical uncertainty. In other words, people should be unsure about their values, including how selfish or altruistic they should be, and under this uncertainty they shouldn’t be doing something like trying to max out their own power/resources at the expense of the commons or by incurring societal-level risks. If so, then perhaps an AI advisor who is highly philosophically competent can realize this too and convince its principle of the same, before it’s too late.
(I think this is probably the first time I’ve explicitly written down the reasoning in 4.)
Do you have any ideas in mind that you want to talk about?