Peasants, when considered altogether, were crucial for the economy. So the intuitions about the idealized concept of a noble don’t transfer given this disanalogy. And the actual historical nobles are not a robust prototype for the concept:
England at that time was conducting enclosures. Basically, rich people put up fences around common land to graze sheep on it. The poor were left with no land to grow food on, and had to go somewhere else. They ended up in cities, living in slums, trying to find scarce work and giving their last pennies to slumlords.
I don’t disagree that those who we called nobels frequently acted badly. But I do see idealized noble values as worth looking at. Think less real kings and lords and more valorized archetypes like Robin Hood, King Richard the Lionhearted, of course King Arthur and his Knights. I think this fiction captures a kind of picture of the expectations we set for what good leaders look like who have power over others, and that’s the version I’m suggesting is worth using as a starting point for what we want “good” AI to look like.
I’m also not very concerned about the economic reality of what made the need for idealized nobility norms exist in feudal societies. I don’t see that as a key part of what I’m pointing at. Nobility has a larger and longer tradition than the one used in Medieval Europe, though it is the expression of it that I and most folks on Less Wrong are probably familiar with.
Peasants, when considered altogether, were crucial for the economy. So the intuitions about the idealized concept of a noble don’t transfer given this disanalogy. And the actual historical nobles are not a robust prototype for the concept:
I don’t disagree that those who we called nobels frequently acted badly. But I do see idealized noble values as worth looking at. Think less real kings and lords and more valorized archetypes like Robin Hood, King Richard the Lionhearted, of course King Arthur and his Knights. I think this fiction captures a kind of picture of the expectations we set for what good leaders look like who have power over others, and that’s the version I’m suggesting is worth using as a starting point for what we want “good” AI to look like.
I’m also not very concerned about the economic reality of what made the need for idealized nobility norms exist in feudal societies. I don’t see that as a key part of what I’m pointing at. Nobility has a larger and longer tradition than the one used in Medieval Europe, though it is the expression of it that I and most folks on Less Wrong are probably familiar with.