Laura: Yes, I absolutely steal the key. Given the context of the original question, I had in mind the right to life, in particular. I didn’t make this distinction until you asked this question. I happen not to think that the right to property is anything like as valuable as the right to life. (By “right” I mean nothing more than ground rules that society has “agreed” on.) Again, I have a problem with acting as though an individual’s life is the eminent domain of society. As in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the picture looks very different depending on whether you are the beneficiary or the sacrifice.
It could be that ordinary political ideas are inadequate for a world in which a superintelligence is available. Part of the reason that the idea of forcefully sacrificing the few for the many is repulsive to me is that, in general in the present world, nobody knows enough to be trusted to make reliable utility predictions of such gravity. Even still, in a world with AI, the problem of non-consent remains. It’s all well and good to speak of utility, but next time, it could be you! How does it come to be that each individual has forfeited control over her/his own destiny? Is it just part of “the contract?”
Laura: Yes, I absolutely steal the key. Given the context of the original question, I had in mind the right to life, in particular. I didn’t make this distinction until you asked this question. I happen not to think that the right to property is anything like as valuable as the right to life. (By “right” I mean nothing more than ground rules that society has “agreed” on.) Again, I have a problem with acting as though an individual’s life is the eminent domain of society. As in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the picture looks very different depending on whether you are the beneficiary or the sacrifice.
It could be that ordinary political ideas are inadequate for a world in which a superintelligence is available. Part of the reason that the idea of forcefully sacrificing the few for the many is repulsive to me is that, in general in the present world, nobody knows enough to be trusted to make reliable utility predictions of such gravity. Even still, in a world with AI, the problem of non-consent remains. It’s all well and good to speak of utility, but next time, it could be you! How does it come to be that each individual has forfeited control over her/his own destiny? Is it just part of “the contract?”