And so I have concluded that there is no basis on which to judge others as “to blame” or as “morally wrong”. Thus punishment makes no sense in terms of being “deserved”, and neither does vengeance (except possibly in terms of the vengeance seeker seeking their own emotional pleasure/relief/closure).
I think this is a pretty commonly held view on this site, and Yudkowsky would probably agree, especially since you clarified that you still see utility in justice for practical reasons, rather than for its own sake.
I unfortunately can’t find where right now, but I think Yudkowsky has said somewhere that he wants AI to create a utopia for everybody, and not punish criminals, no matter how horrible of people they were. After all, once an FAI has taken power, those criminals are no more threat to society because the FAI can always stop them from doing evil things, and thus there is no reason to try to rein them in with punishment, except for what is essentially spite/arbitrary emotional pleasure.
As for free will, I think it does exist, but not in the sense that libertarians want it to. It exists in a more practical sense, it’s more something like “if we made a law against this thing it might actually deter people” than “people are metaphysically able to take different choices in a way which somehow is neither deterministic nor random”.
If you follow timeless decision theory which is what Yudkowsky advocated in the sequences there are many times where you want to punish people for defecting from cooperation. The word deserve seems to me very fine to speak about that dynamic.
I think this is a pretty commonly held view on this site, and Yudkowsky would probably agree, especially since you clarified that you still see utility in justice for practical reasons, rather than for its own sake.
I unfortunately can’t find where right now, but I think Yudkowsky has said somewhere that he wants AI to create a utopia for everybody, and not punish criminals, no matter how horrible of people they were. After all, once an FAI has taken power, those criminals are no more threat to society because the FAI can always stop them from doing evil things, and thus there is no reason to try to rein them in with punishment, except for what is essentially spite/arbitrary emotional pleasure.
As for free will, I think it does exist, but not in the sense that libertarians want it to. It exists in a more practical sense, it’s more something like “if we made a law against this thing it might actually deter people” than “people are metaphysically able to take different choices in a way which somehow is neither deterministic nor random”.
If you follow timeless decision theory which is what Yudkowsky advocated in the sequences there are many times where you want to punish people for defecting from cooperation. The word deserve seems to me very fine to speak about that dynamic.
Sure that would fall into the category of “justice for practical reasons rather than for its own sake”