I currently think it’s best to avoid applying social censure in object level discussions of specific topics on LW like Sam discusses here. I’m not trying to make claims about imposing social costs or treating people as morally reprehensible in other contexts.
(That said, I do expect it will be unproductive to treat people as morally reprehensible for doing things where there aren’t reasonably widespread norms against doing the thing. Imposing a bunch of social costs could be productive idk. In the case of AI development, I think there aren’t really strong norms against hastening the development of transformative technology in cases where you think that your efforts on hastening it would be good for the world but you also believe that technology has a serious chance of annihilating humanity and some credible people think the risk of annihilation is very high. I do think there are strong norms against failing to make it very clear that this is what you doing and that you think the technology that you are developing might annihilate us all. And there are norms against trying to downplay the risk relative to what you think. This implies there are strong norms against what the leadership of AI companies are doing (unless they’ve pretty frankly and clearly communicated about their views on the situation), but not really norms against what normal employees at AI companies are doing. Idk though, and people disagree about what the defaults here are. I’m unlikely to respond to replies on this parenthetical as it doesn’t seem very useful to discuss. If people want to talk about this, I suggest making a different top level post / shortform.)
I currently think it’s best to avoid applying social censure in object level discussions of specific topics on LW like Sam discusses here.
Sure, I was just hearing you espouse a much broader view of something like “I wish there was less conflict theory and more mistake theory in explaining differences around people’s views on AI”, which I often feel has been an effective way of sweeping real conflicts under the rug (and I believe blatant conflicts are the best kind of conflicts). We’d have to discuss specifics to know whether you mean it in cases that I think are appropriate or inappropriate. Marks didn’t actually link to any so I am not confident about whether we’re on the same page.
That said, I do expect it will be unproductive to treat people as morally reprehensible for doing things where there aren’t reasonably widespread norms against doing the thing. Imposing a bunch of social costs could be productive idk… Idk though, and people disagree about what the defaults here are. I’m unlikely to respond to replies on this parenthetical as it doesn’t seem very useful to discuss.
This whole passage reads as quite confused to me. I think it is in some ways imperative to track the ethics and morals of people when society isn’t doing so for you, and I think norm change happens partly through people starting to track and build spaces where better norms are enforced.
Suppose someone made the following declaration: “I know that many parts of society doesn’t have norms against lying, and some places have norms in favor of it, but in my life and my business I am going to punish it and not work with people who lie”. I think there will be costs and edge cases, but overall I would think this could be quite inspiring and effective, and help them build a network of people who are trustworthy and behave better than they otherwise would because that person set up a norm.
I am tempted to write a post-length reply here, but I shan’t, because as you say, you’re not interested in discussing further here.
Note that I said “Imposing a bunch of social costs could be productive idk”. This is distinct from “treating as morally reprehensible”. So the paragraph starting with “Suppose someone made the following declaration...” seems reasonable to me.
I currently think it’s best to avoid applying social censure in object level discussions of specific topics on LW like Sam discusses here. I’m not trying to make claims about imposing social costs or treating people as morally reprehensible in other contexts.
(That said, I do expect it will be unproductive to treat people as morally reprehensible for doing things where there aren’t reasonably widespread norms against doing the thing. Imposing a bunch of social costs could be productive idk. In the case of AI development, I think there aren’t really strong norms against hastening the development of transformative technology in cases where you think that your efforts on hastening it would be good for the world but you also believe that technology has a serious chance of annihilating humanity and some credible people think the risk of annihilation is very high. I do think there are strong norms against failing to make it very clear that this is what you doing and that you think the technology that you are developing might annihilate us all. And there are norms against trying to downplay the risk relative to what you think. This implies there are strong norms against what the leadership of AI companies are doing (unless they’ve pretty frankly and clearly communicated about their views on the situation), but not really norms against what normal employees at AI companies are doing. Idk though, and people disagree about what the defaults here are. I’m unlikely to respond to replies on this parenthetical as it doesn’t seem very useful to discuss. If people want to talk about this, I suggest making a different top level post / shortform.)
Sure, I was just hearing you espouse a much broader view of something like “I wish there was less conflict theory and more mistake theory in explaining differences around people’s views on AI”, which I often feel has been an effective way of sweeping real conflicts under the rug (and I believe blatant conflicts are the best kind of conflicts). We’d have to discuss specifics to know whether you mean it in cases that I think are appropriate or inappropriate. Marks didn’t actually link to any so I am not confident about whether we’re on the same page.
This whole passage reads as quite confused to me. I think it is in some ways imperative to track the ethics and morals of people when society isn’t doing so for you, and I think norm change happens partly through people starting to track and build spaces where better norms are enforced.
Suppose someone made the following declaration: “I know that many parts of society doesn’t have norms against lying, and some places have norms in favor of it, but in my life and my business I am going to punish it and not work with people who lie”. I think there will be costs and edge cases, but overall I would think this could be quite inspiring and effective, and help them build a network of people who are trustworthy and behave better than they otherwise would because that person set up a norm.
I am tempted to write a post-length reply here, but I shan’t, because as you say, you’re not interested in discussing further here.
Note that I said “Imposing a bunch of social costs could be productive idk”. This is distinct from “treating as morally reprehensible”. So the paragraph starting with “Suppose someone made the following declaration...” seems reasonable to me.