While it seems true that promoting symmetric enmity pretty much always comes with a big cost
I’m not sure about that at all. Suppose that:
Group A is doing something that’s going to lead to harmful consequences for Group B.
Group A mistakenly believes the consequences would be positive instead.
Group B would be more easily roused to action if it were fueled by enmity towards Group A, rather than by tone-neutral disagreement.
Then promoting even symmetric enmity between the groups would be beneficial for Group B.
(Incidentally, note that even if neither party is actively malicious towards the other, “promoting enmity” wouldn’t necessarily involve lying. Feelings of enmity can be fueled by pointing at Group A’s negligence (or whatever flaws are causing them to mistakenly pursue the harmful-to-B activity), rather than by ascribing malicious intent to them. To a significant extent, it’s about framing.)
Well, the parenthetical says “(though it could in theory come with benefits too)”; you could be making a good case for that happening in practice. My statement is just agreeing with the OP that there is a big cost pathway there—even in your example, there’s a bunch of bad stuff that happens from increased symmetric enmity; e.g. it would probably become harder to help A see the error of their ways, the B team would probably end up doing a bunch of enemy stuff purely for the sake of enmity which doesn’t actually help much, A might become B’s enemy and then successfully smack down B, both sides would be spending resources on conflict rather than doing anything in the intersection of ~all human values (such as for example A spending more resources on thinking and getting a better understanding of how their plans are bad for the world / for B), etc. I think the OP is trying to say this narrow point, e.g.:
[...] I think those activities are increasing AI risk, including but not limited to extinction risk. However, that’s a stronger claim than I intend to argue here. Rather, I’ll just be presenting a simple and harmful causal pathway [...]
I’m not sure about that at all. Suppose that:
Group A is doing something that’s going to lead to harmful consequences for Group B.
Group A mistakenly believes the consequences would be positive instead.
Group B would be more easily roused to action if it were fueled by enmity towards Group A, rather than by tone-neutral disagreement.
Then promoting even symmetric enmity between the groups would be beneficial for Group B.
(Incidentally, note that even if neither party is actively malicious towards the other, “promoting enmity” wouldn’t necessarily involve lying. Feelings of enmity can be fueled by pointing at Group A’s negligence (or whatever flaws are causing them to mistakenly pursue the harmful-to-B activity), rather than by ascribing malicious intent to them. To a significant extent, it’s about framing.)
Well, the parenthetical says “(though it could in theory come with benefits too)”; you could be making a good case for that happening in practice. My statement is just agreeing with the OP that there is a big cost pathway there—even in your example, there’s a bunch of bad stuff that happens from increased symmetric enmity; e.g. it would probably become harder to help A see the error of their ways, the B team would probably end up doing a bunch of enemy stuff purely for the sake of enmity which doesn’t actually help much, A might become B’s enemy and then successfully smack down B, both sides would be spending resources on conflict rather than doing anything in the intersection of ~all human values (such as for example A spending more resources on thinking and getting a better understanding of how their plans are bad for the world / for B), etc. I think the OP is trying to say this narrow point, e.g.: