But the strongest argument I’ve heard is that some of these people would use their resources to actively torture some idealized version of their enemies for all eternity.
And yeah, that does seem pretty bad.
But in order for this to end up being bad in a way that outweighs the good they will likely create, you need to be actively creating new people to torture.
If you really hate Bob, you can keep Bob on old earth, tortured for eternity. If you have thousands of enemies, you can do that to all of them. But creating trillions of copies of Bob to torture requires a very specific mix of taking an opinionated bet on decision-theory while taking an oddly enlightened perspective on other people’s values.
I think you are underestimating the extent to which people who do enjoy torturing others would find beauty, depth, and richness in all the ways in which this is possible. Exploring and experimenting with new shades of cruelty, maybe even developing new kinds of goodness for the purpose of subverting and destroying it. And they would want this for the people they love too, much the same way you (probably) would want future humans to explore all kinds of beautiful and strange and complex art, instead of being like “oh sure, I guess we can keep the art that already exists on old earth”.
I don’t see any reason to expect a reflectively endorsed preference for torture to scale differently than other sorts of things that humans like, and it seems like wishful thinking and/or failure to empathize to imagine otherwise.
I don’t see any reason to expect a reflectively endorsed preference for torture
Yep, I agree that in as much as someone has an active preference for torture instead of hatred for specific people, I agree this becomes much trickier. That wasn’t what I was talking about here, since it’s much rarer.
I currently think those psychological predispositions are extremely rare, even among people in powerful positions of authoritarian states. The belief they are common is pretty centrally downstream of propaganda (I encourage you to search for reports of this, and then to start digging, and almost always you can trace it back to propaganda). Like, I do think it exists, mind space is deep and wide, but they are not common (like, I would put the probability of Putin having those traits at like 3%?)
I think you are underestimating the extent to which people who do enjoy torturing others would find beauty, depth, and richness in all the ways in which this is possible. Exploring and experimenting with new shades of cruelty, maybe even developing new kinds of goodness for the purpose of subverting and destroying it. And they would want this for the people they love too, much the same way you (probably) would want future humans to explore all kinds of beautiful and strange and complex art, instead of being like “oh sure, I guess we can keep the art that already exists on old earth”.
I don’t see any reason to expect a reflectively endorsed preference for torture to scale differently than other sorts of things that humans like, and it seems like wishful thinking and/or failure to empathize to imagine otherwise.
Yep, I agree that in as much as someone has an active preference for torture instead of hatred for specific people, I agree this becomes much trickier. That wasn’t what I was talking about here, since it’s much rarer.
I currently think those psychological predispositions are extremely rare, even among people in powerful positions of authoritarian states. The belief they are common is pretty centrally downstream of propaganda (I encourage you to search for reports of this, and then to start digging, and almost always you can trace it back to propaganda). Like, I do think it exists, mind space is deep and wide, but they are not common (like, I would put the probability of Putin having those traits at like 3%?)