Hi, new LW member here. I have this idea that’s been germinating for years, want to get your takes.
TLDR: I think ethics can be derived objectively from the way natural cyclic processes support and sustain or disrupt and undermine each other, and herein lies a key to alignment.
There were many posts recently from, and about, Anthropic’s Alignment Team looking into ethics and religion as a source of prior art on the problem of alignment. I appreciate that, knowing how seriously they take their mission. Ethics is hard, full of subjective judgements and contradictions. By now we as society have almost decide that it is one of those areas where objective science does not and cannot apply.
But if you generalize the notion of evolution—up to cosmological scale and forward to representation, meaning-making and social phenomena, you may notice a pattern: self-sustaining causal loops of various scales. Including physical, chemical, informational, and cultural loops, building on one another and interacting with one another.
That’s one component, loops/processes, and another component is the notion of Coherence vs Contradiction. These can be defined, rather objectively, in terms of the processes either sustaining their conditions, or disrupting them. These notions of Contradiction vs Coherence scale from the layer of physics, to ecology where they sustain or disrupt ecosystems, up to the semiotics of human realm where they sustain meaning-making or disrupt it via irreconcilable conflicts between expectations and reality.
Holding this thought for quite some time, I came to think that perhaps ethics can be defined or derived from these principles. An action that causes disruption of processes that would otherwise stay coherent is ethically negative. An action that sustains and nurtures coherence—is an ethically positive action. I’m simplifying a bit. A comment is not a good place to get into a full argument. Some conflict can be constructive—like the predator/prey cycle—as long as it it does not undermine its own conditions. A process that sustains itself by undermining what it depends on is already a contradiction, it won’t last—and, in this frameworks terms, it’s ethically compromised.
If you stop thinking about phenomena as entities and shift your perspective to thinking in terms of processes, and realize that most processes at all scales form cycles or are parts of cycles, that must sustain their own homeostasis, you can see how ethics could be defined as coherence or disruption. It matches surprisingly well with common sense ethics, and major religious systems (I tried). I suppose it makes sense: violence, stealing, cheating on your wife, seeding discord and so on—disrupts otherwise coherent processes. Industrial civilization undermines the natural cycle on this planet. In tech orgs, investing in making your loops more effective sustains the business—while hyper-focusing on the features at the expense of Tech Debt—undermines the org’s long-term health. Trivial, basic examples—there are many more, once you see them you can’t unsee.
And so, I thought, what if this could be the foundation of a future science, ethics of coherence and disruption of (cyclic) processes? From the narrow perspective of AI Alignment, orienting the model to these structural principles would allow it to generalize across a wide variety of unanticipated scenarios. From the wider scope of humanity at large, this could be akin to invention of physical hygiene: analysis and prevention of process contradictions/disruptions, methodically and systemically.
Stay with this thought for a bit, if my expression is rough you may still see the seed of rationality. I will be happy to engage with anyone who’s interested in developing this idea.
I have done some publication research and analysis, and there are quite a few papers that touch upon some of the same ideas but not quite in the same way.
Has anyone here explored process-based approaches to ethics?
Hi, new LW member here. I have this idea that’s been germinating for years, want to get your takes.
TLDR: I think ethics can be derived objectively from the way natural cyclic processes support and sustain or disrupt and undermine each other, and herein lies a key to alignment.
There were many posts recently from, and about, Anthropic’s Alignment Team looking into ethics and religion as a source of prior art on the problem of alignment. I appreciate that, knowing how seriously they take their mission. Ethics is hard, full of subjective judgements and contradictions. By now we as society have almost decide that it is one of those areas where objective science does not and cannot apply.
But if you generalize the notion of evolution—up to cosmological scale and forward to representation, meaning-making and social phenomena, you may notice a pattern: self-sustaining causal loops of various scales. Including physical, chemical, informational, and cultural loops, building on one another and interacting with one another.
That’s one component, loops/processes, and another component is the notion of Coherence vs Contradiction. These can be defined, rather objectively, in terms of the processes either sustaining their conditions, or disrupting them. These notions of Contradiction vs Coherence scale from the layer of physics, to ecology where they sustain or disrupt ecosystems, up to the semiotics of human realm where they sustain meaning-making or disrupt it via irreconcilable conflicts between expectations and reality.
Holding this thought for quite some time, I came to think that perhaps ethics can be defined or derived from these principles. An action that causes disruption of processes that would otherwise stay coherent is ethically negative. An action that sustains and nurtures coherence—is an ethically positive action. I’m simplifying a bit. A comment is not a good place to get into a full argument. Some conflict can be constructive—like the predator/prey cycle—as long as it it does not undermine its own conditions. A process that sustains itself by undermining what it depends on is already a contradiction, it won’t last—and, in this frameworks terms, it’s ethically compromised.
If you stop thinking about phenomena as entities and shift your perspective to thinking in terms of processes, and realize that most processes at all scales form cycles or are parts of cycles, that must sustain their own homeostasis, you can see how ethics could be defined as coherence or disruption. It matches surprisingly well with common sense ethics, and major religious systems (I tried). I suppose it makes sense: violence, stealing, cheating on your wife, seeding discord and so on—disrupts otherwise coherent processes. Industrial civilization undermines the natural cycle on this planet. In tech orgs, investing in making your loops more effective sustains the business—while hyper-focusing on the features at the expense of Tech Debt—undermines the org’s long-term health. Trivial, basic examples—there are many more, once you see them you can’t unsee.
And so, I thought, what if this could be the foundation of a future science, ethics of coherence and disruption of (cyclic) processes? From the narrow perspective of AI Alignment, orienting the model to these structural principles would allow it to generalize across a wide variety of unanticipated scenarios. From the wider scope of humanity at large, this could be akin to invention of physical hygiene: analysis and prevention of process contradictions/disruptions, methodically and systemically.
Stay with this thought for a bit, if my expression is rough you may still see the seed of rationality. I will be happy to engage with anyone who’s interested in developing this idea.
I have done some publication research and analysis, and there are quite a few papers that touch upon some of the same ideas but not quite in the same way.
Has anyone here explored process-based approaches to ethics?