Like, more generally—if we’re going to discuss unwelcome features of what is, I’d like to see us establish some sort of way to have some confidence that we’re going at all a similar direction about what should be.
I had trouble figuring out which part of your post was intended to be the main question. I’ve left a few comments responding to various parts of it.
Re what outcomes I’m aiming for, honestly a lot of what motivates my thinking is how much I care about cooperation. I just expect that for cooperation to work at large scales and over the long term, you need to do a bunch of exclusion/separation at smaller scales.
I had trouble figuring out which part of your post was intended to be the main question. I’ve left a few comments responding to various parts of it.
Appreciated! I have a longer comment replying to your reply over there I’ll send in about a day, after some editing to remove my signature word vomit style. It will be more specific than this comment.
a lot of what motivates my thinking is how much I care about cooperation
This is a promising thing to say! It slightly reduces my probability somewhat that your followup statement is quite as concerning as it sounds.
you need to do a bunch of exclusion/separation at smaller scales.
I could buy this literal statement, probably in a different form than you mean it. I’ve thought for a long time that, if we get an aligned overwhelming superintelligence and can worry about mundane things like this, then people who want human monocultures (eg, a culture with only 6-fingered people, to make up an example) may need to move to isolated locations to get their monocultures, though that would have difficulties relating to ensuring newly made kids can give informed consent. And to spell it out, policies like that in the presence of an overwhelming superintelligence would look quite different than similar-sounding ones implemented today.
My impression is that a lot of current bad social situations have no separation-based winning moves available that don’t involve worsening conflict or screwing many people over at once, moving people around being generally wildly expensive to do well—I imagine something like $10k/person conditional on move being a lower bound on how expensive doing it morally might be—and thus historically basically universally happening in ways that range from “kinda bad” to “top 5 worst things that have ever happened”. So, like, no relocation-based policy seems like it could be good.
I do think people who want to prevent that from happening again would be more successful in doing so if they’re able to discuss controversial topics without causing meltdowns.
On the thread-starter shortform: Right now, my impression is that politics is a pretty heavily loaded game in a way it wasn’t even recently, and that there are many otherwise ordinary things it’s not safe to say, to a much greater degree than was true two years ago. I’ve been avoiding politics topics in general, except for ones where I think it’s very important to make a comment because it’s unlikely anyone else tries to bridge worldviews in a way I’d like to; your comments on the topic have risen to that standard for me. I’ll have to think about whether there’s anything more specific I want to say.
I’d still be interested to see your response to the question I asked!
Like, more generally—if we’re going to discuss unwelcome features of what is, I’d like to see us establish some sort of way to have some confidence that we’re going at all a similar direction about what should be.
I had trouble figuring out which part of your post was intended to be the main question. I’ve left a few comments responding to various parts of it.
Re what outcomes I’m aiming for, honestly a lot of what motivates my thinking is how much I care about cooperation. I just expect that for cooperation to work at large scales and over the long term, you need to do a bunch of exclusion/separation at smaller scales.
Why not just talk about this instead?
Appreciated! I have a longer comment replying to your reply over there I’ll send in about a day, after some editing to remove my signature word vomit style. It will be more specific than this comment.
This is a promising thing to say! It slightly reduces my probability somewhat that your followup statement is quite as concerning as it sounds.
I could buy this literal statement, probably in a different form than you mean it. I’ve thought for a long time that, if we get an aligned overwhelming superintelligence and can worry about mundane things like this, then people who want human monocultures (eg, a culture with only 6-fingered people, to make up an example) may need to move to isolated locations to get their monocultures, though that would have difficulties relating to ensuring newly made kids can give informed consent. And to spell it out, policies like that in the presence of an overwhelming superintelligence would look quite different than similar-sounding ones implemented today.
My impression is that a lot of current bad social situations have no separation-based winning moves available that don’t involve worsening conflict or screwing many people over at once, moving people around being generally wildly expensive to do well—I imagine something like $10k/person conditional on move being a lower bound on how expensive doing it morally might be—and thus historically basically universally happening in ways that range from “kinda bad” to “top 5 worst things that have ever happened”. So, like, no relocation-based policy seems like it could be good.
I do think people who want to prevent that from happening again would be more successful in doing so if they’re able to discuss controversial topics without causing meltdowns.
On the thread-starter shortform: Right now, my impression is that politics is a pretty heavily loaded game in a way it wasn’t even recently, and that there are many otherwise ordinary things it’s not safe to say, to a much greater degree than was true two years ago. I’ve been avoiding politics topics in general, except for ones where I think it’s very important to make a comment because it’s unlikely anyone else tries to bridge worldviews in a way I’d like to; your comments on the topic have risen to that standard for me. I’ll have to think about whether there’s anything more specific I want to say.