This seems to me like “evidence: wishful thinking” and “the real dictatorship has never been tried”.
Basically, you say that powerful people are usually horrible, but that it’s typically possible to find motivation other than mere sadism for their actions, therefore… they were actually not evil people, only victims of their incentives?
They only tortured people to death because they could make some profit doing so. They only raped because they had sexual desires. If you removed these incentives, you could see that these pure souls would never hurt anyone!
That’s not how good and evil works, at all. Most people have sexual desires, and the difference between good and evil is not “sexual” vs “impotent”, but it’s “wouldn’t hurt other people, even if it’s kinda tempting” vs “would hurt other people, because LOL why not”. Similarly, there is practically every day an opportunity to steal some weaker person’s purse and run away, and the difference between good and evil again is “would do it” vs “wouldn’t do it”.
So you basically just proved that powerful people are horrible, because they are evil. Not absurdly evil in the sense of “would hurt other people even at a great cost to myself”, just the ordinary psychopathic evil “would hurt other people because why not, if it gives me some pleasure or profit, even if the profit or pleasure is orders of magnitude smaller compared to the harm done to the victim”.
I do not find it very calming to know that out future overlords will hurt us only if it makes them feel pleasure or fun, or if it helps them generate a little more profit, but they wouldn’t go so far as to pointlessly torture us even if it cost them money and gave them absolutely no pleasure—not even the kind that Elon Musk felt after he made millions of Africans die just to make a stupid political point.
I don’t think you’re engaging with the argument here. I’m saying even the powerful are usually fairly neurotypical and therefore have more empathy than sadism, and that that’s all it takes for an on-average good future.
Emphasis on the usually. I said repeatedly that this isn’t a safe option.
“Everyone who does bad things is evil and good people don’t do bad things” sounds like Disney, not a serious psychological or philosophical theory. Yes, principles are real and a good thing, and many people have pretty strong ones; but that doesn’t make everyone with fewer principles completely morally nihilistic, let alone sadistic.
More profit? I’m explictly talking about a situation where profit is no longer part of the picture, because there’s a singleton ASI that can outproduce everone else to an arbitrary degree. So I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing.
And I’m not telling you to be calm. I’m telling you to think because we’re in a bit of a pickle here. If you’ve got a plan that avoids choosing between distributed and concentrated ASI power, I’m all ears.
This seems to me like “evidence: wishful thinking” and “the real dictatorship has never been tried”.
Basically, you say that powerful people are usually horrible, but that it’s typically possible to find motivation other than mere sadism for their actions, therefore… they were actually not evil people, only victims of their incentives?
They only tortured people to death because they could make some profit doing so. They only raped because they had sexual desires. If you removed these incentives, you could see that these pure souls would never hurt anyone!
That’s not how good and evil works, at all. Most people have sexual desires, and the difference between good and evil is not “sexual” vs “impotent”, but it’s “wouldn’t hurt other people, even if it’s kinda tempting” vs “would hurt other people, because LOL why not”. Similarly, there is practically every day an opportunity to steal some weaker person’s purse and run away, and the difference between good and evil again is “would do it” vs “wouldn’t do it”.
So you basically just proved that powerful people are horrible, because they are evil. Not absurdly evil in the sense of “would hurt other people even at a great cost to myself”, just the ordinary psychopathic evil “would hurt other people because why not, if it gives me some pleasure or profit, even if the profit or pleasure is orders of magnitude smaller compared to the harm done to the victim”.
I do not find it very calming to know that out future overlords will hurt us only if it makes them feel pleasure or fun, or if it helps them generate a little more profit, but they wouldn’t go so far as to pointlessly torture us even if it cost them money and gave them absolutely no pleasure—not even the kind that Elon Musk felt after he made millions of Africans die just to make a stupid political point.
I don’t think you’re engaging with the argument here. I’m saying even the powerful are usually fairly neurotypical and therefore have more empathy than sadism, and that that’s all it takes for an on-average good future.
Emphasis on the usually. I said repeatedly that this isn’t a safe option.
“Everyone who does bad things is evil and good people don’t do bad things” sounds like Disney, not a serious psychological or philosophical theory. Yes, principles are real and a good thing, and many people have pretty strong ones; but that doesn’t make everyone with fewer principles completely morally nihilistic, let alone sadistic.
More profit? I’m explictly talking about a situation where profit is no longer part of the picture, because there’s a singleton ASI that can outproduce everone else to an arbitrary degree. So I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing.
And I’m not telling you to be calm. I’m telling you to think because we’re in a bit of a pickle here. If you’ve got a plan that avoids choosing between distributed and concentrated ASI power, I’m all ears.