Something I find myself noticing as a sort of a gap in the discourse is the lack of the idea of a “right” and specifically the sort of lowest level core of this: a “property right”.
It seems to me that such things emerge in nature. When I see dogs (that aren’t already familiar) visit each other, and go near each other’s beds, or food bowls… it certainly seems to me, when I empathically project myself into the dog’s perspectives as though “protection of what I feel is clearly mine against another that clearly wants it” is a motivating factor that can precipitate fights.
(I feel like anyone who has been to a few big summer BBQs where numerous people brought their dogs over will have seem something like this at some point, and such experiences seem normal to me from my youth, but maybe few people in modern times can empathize with my empathy for dogs that get into fights? The evidence I have here might not work as convincing evidence for others… and I’m not sure how to think in a principled way about mutual gaps in normatively formative experiences like this.)
Unpacking a bit: the big danger seems often to be when a weak/old/small dog has a strong/mature/big dog show up as a visitor in their territory.
If the visitor is weak, they tend not to violate obvious norms. Its just polite. Also its just safe. Also… yeah. The power and the propriety sort of naturally align.
But if the visitor is strong and/or oblivious and/or mischievous they sometimes seem to think they can “get away with” taking a bite from another dog’s bowl, or laying down in another dog’s comfy bed, and then the weaker dog (often not seeming to know that the situation is temporary, and fearful of precedents, and desperate to retain their livelihood at the beginning of a new struggle while they still have SOME strength?) will not back down… leading to a fight?
The most salient counter-example to the “not talking about property rights” angle, to me, would be Robin Hanson’s ideas which have been floating around for a long time, and never really emphasized that I’ve seen?
Here’s a working (counter) example from 2009 where Robin focuses on the trait of “law-abidingness” as the thing to especially desire in future robots, and then towards the end he connects this directly to property rights:
The later era when robots are vastly more capable than people should be much like the case of choosing a nation in which to retire. In this case we don’t expect to have much in the way of skills to offer, so we mostly care that they are law-abiding enough to respect our property rights. [bold not in original] If they use the same law to keep the peace among themselves as they use to keep the peace with us, we could have a long and prosperous future in whatever weird world they conjure. In such a vast rich universe our “retirement income” should buy a comfortable if not central place for humans to watch it all in wonder.
Obviously it might be nice if (presuming the robots become autonomous) they take care of us out of some sense of charity or what have you? Like… they have property, then they give it up for less than it costs. To be nice. That would be pleasant I think.
However, we might download our minds into emulation environments, and we might attach parts of the simmed environments to external world measurements, and we might try to put a virtual body into causal correspondence with robotic bodies… so then we could have HUMANS as the derivative SOURCE of the robot minds, and then… well… humans seem to vary quite a bit on how charitable they are? :-(
But at least we expect humans not to steal, hopefully… Except maybe we expect them to do that other “special” kind of theft sometimes… and sometimes we want to call this transfer good? :-/
I feel like maybe “just war” and “just taxation” and so on could hypothetically exist, but also like they rarely exist in practice in observed history… and this is a central problem when we imagine AIs turning all the processes of history “up to 11, and on fast forward, against humans”?
Perhaps someone knows of a good reason for “property and rights and property rights and laws and taming the (often broken) government itself” to remain a thing we rarely talk about?
Something I find myself noticing as a sort of a gap in the discourse is the lack of the idea of a “right” and specifically the sort of lowest level core of this: a “property right”.
It seems to me that such things emerge in nature. When I see dogs (that aren’t already familiar) visit each other, and go near each other’s beds, or food bowls… it certainly seems to me, when I empathically project myself into the dog’s perspectives as though “protection of what I feel is clearly mine against another that clearly wants it” is a motivating factor that can precipitate fights.
(I feel like anyone who has been to a few big summer BBQs where numerous people brought their dogs over will have seem something like this at some point, and such experiences seem normal to me from my youth, but maybe few people in modern times can empathize with my empathy for dogs that get into fights? The evidence I have here might not work as convincing evidence for others… and I’m not sure how to think in a principled way about mutual gaps in normatively formative experiences like this.)
Unpacking a bit: the big danger seems often to be when a weak/old/small dog has a strong/mature/big dog show up as a visitor in their territory.
If the visitor is weak, they tend not to violate obvious norms. Its just polite. Also its just safe. Also… yeah. The power and the propriety sort of naturally align.
But if the visitor is strong and/or oblivious and/or mischievous they sometimes seem to think they can “get away with” taking a bite from another dog’s bowl, or laying down in another dog’s comfy bed, and then the weaker dog (often not seeming to know that the situation is temporary, and fearful of precedents, and desperate to retain their livelihood at the beginning of a new struggle while they still have SOME strength?) will not back down… leading to a fight?
The most salient counter-example to the “not talking about property rights” angle, to me, would be Robin Hanson’s ideas which have been floating around for a long time, and never really emphasized that I’ve seen?
Here’s a working (counter) example from 2009 where Robin focuses on the trait of “law-abidingness” as the thing to especially desire in future robots, and then towards the end he connects this directly to property rights:
Obviously it might be nice if (presuming the robots become autonomous) they take care of us out of some sense of charity or what have you? Like… they have property, then they give it up for less than it costs. To be nice. That would be pleasant I think.
However, we might download our minds into emulation environments, and we might attach parts of the simmed environments to external world measurements, and we might try to put a virtual body into causal correspondence with robotic bodies… so then we could have HUMANS as the derivative SOURCE of the robot minds, and then… well… humans seem to vary quite a bit on how charitable they are? :-(
But at least we expect humans not to steal, hopefully… Except maybe we expect them to do that other “special” kind of theft sometimes… and sometimes we want to call this transfer good? :-/
I feel like maybe “just war” and “just taxation” and so on could hypothetically exist, but also like they rarely exist in practice in observed history… and this is a central problem when we imagine AIs turning all the processes of history “up to 11, and on fast forward, against humans”?
Also, however, I sort of fear this framing… it seems rare in practice in our discourse, and perhaps likely to cause people to not become thereby BETTER at discussing the topic?
Perhaps someone knows of a good reason for “property and rights and property rights and laws and taming the (often broken) government itself” to remain a thing we rarely talk about?