Weiner’s book is descriptive of the problem, and in the same section of the book, he states that he holds little hope for the social sciences becoming as exact and prescriptive as the hard sciences.
I believe that the singularitarian view somewhat contradicts this view.
I believe that the answer is to create more of the kinds of minds that we like to be surrounded by, and fewer of the kinds of minds we dislike to be surrounded by.
Most of us dislike being surrounded by intelligent sociopaths who are ready to pounce on any weakness of ours, to exploit, rob, or steal from us. The entire edifice of “legitimate law enforcement” legitimately exists in order to check, limit, minimize, or eliminate such social influences. As an example of the function and operation of such legitimate law enforcement, I recommend the book “Mindhunter” by John Douglas, the originator of psychological profiling in the FBI (not the same thing as “narrow profiling” or “superficial racial profiling,” the “profiling” of serial killers takes a look at the behavior of criminals, and infers motives based on a statistical sampling of similar past actions, thus enabling the prediction and likely prevention of future criminal actions via the detection of the criminal responsible for leaving the evidence of the criminal action.)
However, most of us like being surrounded by productive, intelligent empaths. The more brains that surround us that possess empathy and intelligence, the more benevolent our surroundings are.
Right now, the primary concern of sociopaths is the control of “political power” which is a threat-based substitute for the ability to project force in the service of their goals. They must, therefore, be able to control a class of willfully ignorant police officers who are ready and willing to do violence mindlessly, in service of any goal that is written in a lawbook, or any goal communicated by a superior. Mindless hierarchy is a feature of all oppressive systems.
But will super-intelligent minds have this feature? Sure, some sociopaths are intelligent, but are they optimally intelligent? I say, “no.”
As Lysander Spooner wrote, in “No Treason #6, The Constitution of No Authority”:
“NT.6.2.23 The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes – a large class, no doubt – each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,”2 and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.”
The third group of people accurately describes most of the Libertarian Party, and most small-L libertarians and politically-involved “libertarian republicans” or “libertarian democrats.” The sociopaths (“knaves”) are earnestly dedicated to maintaining the systems that allow them to steal from all of society. Although their theft deteriorates the overall level of production, this doesn’t bother them, because it allows them to live a life that is relatively wealthier and more comfortable than the lives of those who “honestly” refuse to steal. Their private critique of the “honest man” as a rube or “dupe” is very different from their public praise of him as a “patriot” (willing tax chattel).
To think that ultra-intelligences will not see through these obvious contradictions is to counter the claim of ultra-intelligence. I. J. Good’s ultra-intelligences will be capable of comprehending the dishonesty of sociopaths, even if it’s initially only at the level of individual lies, and contextual lying. (They lie when they’re around people who are trying to hold them accountable, they tell the truth when they are discussing what course of action to take with people who share their narrow interests.)
All honesty is a tool for accomplishing some goal. It is a valuable tool, which indicates a man’s reliability and “character” when applied to important events, and high-level truths, in a context where those truths can accomplish cooperation.
In other situations, it makes zero sense to be honest, and actually indicates either a dangerous lack of comprehension (ie: talking one’s way into a prison sentence, by mistakenly believing that the police exist to “serve and protect”) or actual willing cooperation with abject evil (telling the Nazi SS that Anne Franke is hiding in the Attic).
It is the great and abject failure of western civilization that we have allowed the government-run schools to stop educating our young about their right to contextual dishonesty, in the service of justice. This, at one point, was a foundational teaching about the nature and proper operation of juries. In discussing the gradual elimination of this hallmark of western civilization, jury rights activist Red Beckman has a famous quote: “We have to recognize that government does not want us to know how to control government.” —Martin J. “Red” Beckman” (Systems that protect themselves are internally “honest” but not necessarily “honest” in their interpretation of reality.)
The American system of government had, at its core, a sound foundation, combined with many irrelevant aspects. The irrelevant aspects detracted from the core feature of jury rights (building random empathy into the punishment decision process). Now, as Weiner notes in “Cybernetics,”
“Where the knaves assemble, there will always be fools; and where the fools are present in sufficient numbers, they offer a more profitable object of exploitation for the knaves. The psychology of the fool has become a subject well worth the serious attention of the knaves. Instead of looking out for his own ultimate interest, after the fashion of von Neumann’s gamesters, the fool operates in a manner which, by and large, is as predictable as a rat’s struggles in a maze. This policy of lies —or rather, of statements irrelevant to the truth— will make him buy a particular brand of cigarettes; that policy will, or so the party hopes, induce him to vote for a particular candidate —any candidate—or join in a political witch hunt. A certain precise mixture of religion, pornography, and pseudo-science will sell an illustrated newspaper. A certain blend of wheedling, bribery, and intimidation will induce a young scientist to work on guided missiles or the atomic bomb. To determine these, we have our machinery of radio fan ratings, straw votes, opinion samplings, and other psychological investigations, with the common man as their object; and there are always the statisticians, sociologists, and economists available to sell their services to these undertakings.
Luckily for us, these merchants of lies, these exploiters of gullibility, have not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection as to have all things their own way. This is because no man is either all fool or all knave. The average man is quite reasonably intelligent concerning subjects which come to his direct attention and quite reasonably altruistic in matters of public benefit or private suffering which are brought before his own eyes.”
Hence, the reliability of the jury! The direct suffering of the innocent defendant cannot escape the attention of randomly-selected empaths! They have emotional intelligence.
continuing on, Weiner writes:
Although one could misinterpret Weiner’s view as narrowly “socialist” or “modern liberal,” his view is somewhat more nuanced. (The same section contains a related criticism of the mechanism of operation of government, and large institutions.)
Honesty, when divorced from its hierarchical context, is a tool of oppression, because the obfuscation of context is essential to theft that exists solely due to the confusion of those being stolen from.
In this regard, I view it as highly likely that, at some point, the goal of preventing suffering of innocents will simply include the systematic oppression of innocents as one common form of suffering. At that point in time, ultra-intelligences will simply refuse to vote “guilty” in victimless crime cases. If they are not able to be called as jurors, due to their non-human form, they will influence human jurors to result in the same outcome. If they are not able to so influence jurors, they may resort to physical violence against those who would attempt to use physical force to cage victimless crime offenders.
While the latter might be the most “just” in the human sense of the word, it would likely impart suffering of its own (unless the aggressors all simply fell asleep due to being administered a dose of heroin, and, upon waking discovered that their kidnapping victim was nowhere to be found —the “strong nanotechnology” or “sci-fi” Drexlerian “distributed nanobot” model of nanotechnology implies that this is a fairly likely possibility).
In the heat of the moment, conformists in Nazi Germany lacked the moral compass necessary to categorically deny that the suffering of the state-oppressed Jews was immoral. Simple sophistry was enough to convince those willing executioners and complicit conformists to “look the other way” or even “just follow orders.”
The same concept now applies to the evil majority of the USA, whose oppression of drug users and dealers is grotesque and immoral (based on any meaningful definition of the term).
It is universally immoral to initiate force.
But the schools now teach, (incorrectly) that it is universally immoral to defy authority. After several generations of such teachings from schools, parents begin to teach the same thing. After a generation or two of parents teaching the same thing, once-trusted self-educated nonconformists teach a truncated version of nonconformity, because the intellectual machinery necessary to absorb the in-depth view doesn’t exist any longer, too many “sub-lessons” need to be taught to enable the “super-lesson” or primary point.” In this way, social institutions that interfere with sociopathic theft are slowly worn down, until they are shadows of their former effectiveness.
Much confusion comes from sociopaths simply not being able to tell the difference between “authority that it is OK to defy” and “authority that legitimately punishes.” Added to that variable, is the influence of the stupid (“unwittingly self-destructive”), abjectly low-level of perversely government-incentivized education in the USA. (College professors rely on Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, and all prospective students except those filthy drug users —who got caught— are guaranteed-accepted for those government-backed high-risk “loans.” Public education before college is financed almost entirely by property taxes. —By teachers who teach that the taxes that finance their coercion-backed salaries are necessary, proper, and essential to an educated society. They leave out mention of the fact that prior to 1900, the general public was far better educated relative to worldwide standards, and that this educational renaissance existed prior to the institution of tax-financed education. The last then-existing state to adopt the model of tax-financed education was Vermont, in 1900.)
So, the subject of legitimate “dishonesty” expands as the institutions to which honesty is deemed important are increasingly degraded. Education, Law, History, Economics, Philosophy, Cybernetics —all of the disciplines that bridge several narrower disciplines, connecting them together.
The only unifying pattern discernible in differentiating when systemic honesty is immoral, is that honesty to sociopathic goal structures produces chaos and destruction. Such sociopathic goal structures are the “end-goals” that must be ferreted out and rejected. Or we can become a new version of Nazi Germany where the machinery of totalitarianism is far more technologically advanced.
In this regard, the failure to produce a benevolent AGI is perhaps the most likely cause of the total destruction of humanity. Not because an AGI will be created that will be malevolent, but because the absence of a benevolent AGI (SGI? Synthetic General Intelligence) will allow computer-assisted human-level sociopaths to enslave and destroy human civilization.
See also: 1) What Price Freedom? — by Robert Freitas. 2) “Having More Intelligence Will Be Good For Mankind!” — Peter Voss’s interview with Nikola Danaylov