I don’t really understand how anyone can grasp the concept of not caring.
I think the meme comes from popculture where many bad villains do care even a little bit. I think I once or twice met a villain who didn’t, who just wanted everyone dead for their own amusement and all the arguments were met with “but, you see, I don’t care.”
If I were to give an analogy: Do you care about the positions of individual grains of sand on distant beaches? If I hand you a grain of sand, do you care exactly which grain of sand it is? If you are even marginally indifferent, then think of an alien intellect that cares very much about what grain of sand it is, but is just as indifferent about humans.
I like that analogy. I imagine that for an AIXI-style artificial intelligence, the whole futures of the universe are just like the pieces of the sand on the beach. It chooses a piece according to some criteria, for example the brightest color, but every other aspect is so completely irrelevant than most humans would be unable to imagine that kind of indifference. Our human brains keep screaming at us: “But surely even a mere machine would not dare to choose a piece of sand that is a part of such-and-such configuration. Why would it do such a horrible thing?” But the machine is not even aware that those configurations exist, and certainly does not care to know.
Well, what I am pressing is the issue: You can know but not care.
I thin that is what many fail to grasp about psychopaths who do bad things. They know that they are committing crimes, they just don’t care. (There are some good psychopaths who has disregarded their initial stupid philosophical conclusions about morality and actually help people, but those are rarely heard.)
A superintelligent paperclipper can know everything about human ethics, but only use that to manipulate humans into making more paperclips.
I think I once or twice met a villain who didn’t, who just wanted everyone dead for their own amusement and all the arguments were met with “but, you see, I don’t care.”
...which means they were answering questions rather than trying to kill people^W^W amuse themselves.
Usually, these villains actually find it amusing to see humans fail to grasp their motivations, and/or are stalling in order to get an opening through which to kill people.
I don’t feel like enumerating examples, but I feel like I usually don’t find it convincing (and that it’s usually the heroes stalling and the villains helpfully cooperating).
I don’t really understand how anyone can grasp the concept of not caring.
I think the meme comes from popculture where many bad villains do care even a little bit. I think I once or twice met a villain who didn’t, who just wanted everyone dead for their own amusement and all the arguments were met with “but, you see, I don’t care.”
If I were to give an analogy: Do you care about the positions of individual grains of sand on distant beaches? If I hand you a grain of sand, do you care exactly which grain of sand it is? If you are even marginally indifferent, then think of an alien intellect that cares very much about what grain of sand it is, but is just as indifferent about humans.
I like that analogy. I imagine that for an AIXI-style artificial intelligence, the whole futures of the universe are just like the pieces of the sand on the beach. It chooses a piece according to some criteria, for example the brightest color, but every other aspect is so completely irrelevant than most humans would be unable to imagine that kind of indifference. Our human brains keep screaming at us: “But surely even a mere machine would not dare to choose a piece of sand that is a part of such-and-such configuration. Why would it do such a horrible thing?” But the machine is not even aware that those configurations exist, and certainly does not care to know.
Well, what I am pressing is the issue: You can know but not care.
I thin that is what many fail to grasp about psychopaths who do bad things. They know that they are committing crimes, they just don’t care. (There are some good psychopaths who has disregarded their initial stupid philosophical conclusions about morality and actually help people, but those are rarely heard.)
A superintelligent paperclipper can know everything about human ethics, but only use that to manipulate humans into making more paperclips.
...which means they were answering questions rather than trying to kill people^W^W amuse themselves.
Usually, these villains actually find it amusing to see humans fail to grasp their motivations, and/or are stalling in order to get an opening through which to kill people.
I don’t feel like enumerating examples, but I feel like I usually don’t find it convincing (and that it’s usually the heroes stalling and the villains helpfully cooperating).