Mostly I’m trying to make the same point as the OP: many people, including LWers, are fanning up the military and AI arms race on the US side, and in my opinion there’s no strong justification for this.
I agree that there’s no strong justification for this, but would make other arguments in this direction rather than point out the data that you did (China caused fewer deaths in external wars), mainly that AGI/ASI is likely to be either unaligned/uncontrollable or radically change the power structure and/or values of whatever country “wins” the AI race, so we can’t form strong judgments based on past evidence.
BTW who on LW is fanning this race? If I try to recall what I’ve seen, it’s mostly about trying to slow China down (through things like export controls and securing American AI labs) rather than speed the US up, which seems unobjectionable? Do you see LWers doing more than this, or think this is objectionable too?
If Alice and Bob are doing something that might be plausibly interpreted as a race, and Alice is not
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to move faster, if she thought about the situation as a race],
but she is
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to slow Bob down, if she thought about the situation as a race],
then this should make an impartial observer Charlie increase his credence that at the very least Alice (if not Bob) is thinking about the situation as a race.
I agree that there’s no strong justification for this, but would make other arguments in this direction rather than point out the data that you did (China caused fewer deaths in external wars), mainly that AGI/ASI is likely to be either unaligned/uncontrollable or radically change the power structure and/or values of whatever country “wins” the AI race, so we can’t form strong judgments based on past evidence.
BTW who on LW is fanning this race? If I try to recall what I’ve seen, it’s mostly about trying to slow China down (through things like export controls and securing American AI labs) rather than speed the US up, which seems unobjectionable? Do you see LWers doing more than this, or think this is objectionable too?
If Alice and Bob are doing something that might be plausibly interpreted as a race, and Alice is not
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to move faster, if she thought about the situation as a race],
but she is
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to slow Bob down, if she thought about the situation as a race],
then this should make an impartial observer Charlie increase his credence that at the very least Alice (if not Bob) is thinking about the situation as a race.