the-citizen

Karma: 110

the-citizen 18 Oct 2014 7:28 UTC
3 points
on: Link: The Openness-Equality Trade-Off in Global Redistribution
I note this is a discussion that’s fairly political (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Politics_is_the_Mind-Killer).

migration becomes a natural substitute (for wealth redistribution)

I think this is one statement I have difficultly with. If the country concerned doesn’t have an objective to improve the life of people outside the culturally dominant group, its unlikely that migration can be reasonably equated with anything like wealth redistribution. The example of open but very unequal countries given is actually illustrative of that. I don’t think such cases are exceptions to a rule, I think there’s no particular correlation at all.

A number of related issues occur to me:
- Speed/volume of effective integration in a country, and its role in reducing cultural factors of inequality.
- Welfare / public services budgets and their role as migration incentives
- Brain drain as a poor strategy to reduce inequality, and the waste of certain vital skills when they’re located in some rich countries.
- Earned things (eg. rights / citizenship) are generally more valued by people. Perhaps initial disadvantage aids integration.
- Visible inequality breeds resentment. Perhaps initial disadvantage hinders integration.
- Effectiveness of spending on migrants vs foreign aid as a method of improving lives.
- Circumstances in which people will work to “pass on” the assistance they receive and use their new advantages to work to assist others.
I don’t think there’s a discrete answer to your question exactly, other than “it depends”, and I don’t want to get into politics, so I’ll leave it at that. Thanks for post.

A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)

the-citizen19 Oct 2014 7:59 UTC

5 points

44 comments7 min readLW link

the-citizen 19 Oct 2014 9:01 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Florian_Dietz’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
Yeah that’s an important topic we’re going to have to think about. I think its our natural inclination to give the same rights to simulated brains as for us meatbags, but there’s some really odd perverse outcomes to that to consider too. Basically, virtual people could become tools for real people to exploit our legal and ethical systems—creating virtual populations for voting etc. I’ve written a little on that half way down this article: http://citizensearth.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/is-placing-consciousness-at-the-heart-of-futurist-ethics-a-terrible-mistake-are-there-alternatives/

I think we’ll need to have some sort of split system—some new system of virtual rights in the virtual world for virtual people and meatbag world rights for us meatbags, basically just to account for the profound physical differences between the two worlds. That we can preserve the species and still have an interesting virtual world. Waaay easier said than done though. This is probably going to be one of the trickiest problems since someone said “so, this democracy thing, how’s it going to work exactly?”

the-citizen 19 Oct 2014 10:17 UTC
2 points
on: Encourage premature AI rebellion
Great idea! A couple of thoughts/questions:
- Would the high-risk, short-term model of a low-risk, long-term model equivilent be a useful predictive comparison? Perhaps merely that change could alter the friendliness? Perhaps the uselessness of such a short-term AI would render the candidates useless for functional rather than ethical reasons?
- Could the types of tests you propose be based by many types of unfriendly AIs? For example, a paperclip maximiser might not press the “thermonuclear destruction” button because it might destroy some of the world’s paperclips?
- I’m having trouble imagining how risk-aversion/appreciation might actually work in practice. Wouldn’t an AI always be selecting an optimal route regardless of risk, unless it actually had some kind of love of suboptimal options? In other words, other goals?
- Provided your other assumptions are all true, perhaps simply the discount rate would be enough?

the-citizen 19 Oct 2014 11:41 UTC
0 points
on: What should a friendly AI do, in this situation?
Great example, but ethically speaking I think under most theories of moral philosophy, I feel its pretty straight forward. The question in a general form goes back to Socrates asking what we should answer to a murderer at the door, who asks whether our friend is inside our house. I remember there was actually at least one who says truth is more important and that you should tell the murderer the truth. But the vast majority disagree.

I think if we think about AI values of preserving life and being honest, the former ought to trump the latter.

the-citizen 19 Oct 2014 13:50 UTC
0 points
on: Outside View(s) and MIRI’s FAI Endgame
One suggestion I’d make is to minimise (you can’t eliminate it) your reliance on philosophy. One example of problematic usage of philosophical concepts is definitely “consciousness”.

http://citizensearth.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/is-placing-consciousness-at-the-heart-of-futurist-ethics-a-terrible-mistake-are-there-alternatives/

I’d much prefer we replace it with far more definable goals like “preservation of homo sapiens / genetic species” and the like.

In terms of inside-outside, I think you may have a point, but it’s important to consider the options available for us. Permanently preventing an intelligence explosion, if an explosion is possible, might be extremely difficult. So the level of safety would have to be considered relative to other developments.

the-citizen 19 Oct 2014 14:38 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Outside View(s) and MIRI’s FAI Endgame
I didn’t say I’D define it lol. Merely that it seems quite reasonable to say its more definable. I’m not sure I’m capable of formalising in code at anywhere near my current level of knowledge. However, it does occur to me that we categorise species in biology quite often—my current inclination is to go with a similar definition. Genetic classification of species is a relatively well explored scientific topic, and while I’m sure there are methodological disagreements, it’s NOTHING compared to philosophy. So it’s a very feasible improvement.

EDIT> Philosophically speaking, I think I might take a crack at defining it at some point, but not yet.

the-citizen 19 Oct 2014 15:28 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Outside View(s) and MIRI’s FAI Endgame

Our ancestors in 10,000 years might share less DNA with us than Neanderthalers.

Well for that to occur we’ll almost certainly need a FAI long before then. So I’d suggest optimise for that first, and think about the fun stuff once survival is ensured.

certain suboptimal DNA composition.

Suboptimal to what goal? There no such thing as an “optimal” DNA composition that I’m aware of. Genetic survival is totaly contextual.

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 4:03 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
Fair point. Because I’m new here I think I was concerned my content would not be of enough interest as separate posts. Probably this wasn’t really the best decision. I might break parts of the article off into more developed pieces if there’s enough interest.

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 4:14 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: TheAncientGeek’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
Thanks for engagement on the philosophical side of things. I’ll politely beg to differ on a couple of points:

Maybe they are just less pessimistic.

Pessimism/optimism doesn’t seem like an appropriate emotion for rational thought on the nature of universe or mind? Perhaps I misunderstand.

It’s not that non dualists don’t.

I fairly certain strict Monists don’t believe in a subject as a metaphysical category the way Dualists do.

Other physicalits do

I don’t think they do. For example, in the case of “subjective experience” they’d not regard the subjective part as meaningful in the way a Dualist does. Only Dualists see the subject and object as legitimate metaphysical categories—that’s what the “Dual” in Dualism is!

Even qualiaphobes don’t think torture is OK.

There’s plenty of other reasons for that beyond accepting the subject. It doesn’t follow that opposition to torture implies belief in consciousness.

Again thanks for engaging on the philosophy, it is actually much appreciated.

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 4:17 UTC
0 points
in reply to: selylindi’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
I think I’d like the comments to be broadly organised and developed as the common themes and main arguments emerge. Apart from that a little more detail. I don’t think it has to go into much implementation specifics, because that’s a separate issue and requires a more highly developed set of math/CS skills. But I think we can make use of a broader set of smart brains by having this kind of discussion.

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 4:19 UTC
0 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
Interesting comment, cheers. What about a situation where the first action of a hostile AI would be to irradiate the Earth, killing all life and removing the FAI’s reason to continue struggling, even though it itself was tough enough to survive? It seems options like this would tip the balance very much in UFAIs favour?

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 4:35 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Outside View(s) and MIRI’s FAI Endgame
OK fair comment, although I note that the genetic approach doesn’t (and imo shouldn’t) only consider the welfare of humans, but also other species. Human genetics would probably have to be the starting point for prioritising them though, otherwise we might end with a FAI governing a planet of plankton or something.

While I’m quite interested in the potential of things like wearable tech and cyborgism, I feel we ought to be fairly cautious with the gene side of things, because the unintentional potential for fashion eugenics, branching off competing species etc. I feel existential risk questions have to come first even if that’s not always the fun option. I see what you’re saying though, and I hope we find a way to have our cake and eat it too if possible.

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 5:16 UTC
0 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
I guess that depends on the level of capability that an AGI had at that point. It supposes the level of knowledge had was enough for recreation, which may be much higher than what’s required for mere protection. It’s hard to perceive as that level of capability is way beyond our own. I’ll certainly give it some thought.

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 10:38 UTC
10 points
on: Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014
So we have lots of guides on how to be rational… but do we have any materials that consider what makes a person decide to pursue rationality and consciously decide to adopt rationality as an approach to life?

Recently I was talking to someone and realised they didn’t accept that a rational approach was always the best one, and it was harder than I expected to come up with an argument that would be compelling for someone that didn’t think rationality was all that worthwhile… not neccessarily irrational, but just not a conscious follower/advocate of it. I think a lot of the arguments for it are actually quite philosophical or in some people’s case mathematical. Got me thinking, what actually turns someone into a rationality fan? A rational argument? Oh wait....

I’ve got some ideas, but nothing I’d consider worth writing down at this stage… is there anything to prevent wheel reinvention?

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 10:52 UTC
0 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
I personally imagine that AGI will arrive well before its possible to store a full down-to-the-subatomic-level map of a person in a space that’s any smaller than the person. “Just store the humans and bring them back” implies such a massive storage requirement that its basically not much different from making a full copy of them anyway, so I wonder if such a massive storage device wouldn’t be equally vulnerable to attack.

I’m also keen to see us continue as a biological species, even if we also run simulated brains or people in parallel. Ideally I can see us doing both if we can establish a FAI. The best bet I can see so far is to make sure a FAI arrives first :-)

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 11:15 UTC
0 points
in reply to: lackofcheese’s comment on: A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)
I understand, but I just want to urge you to examine the details of that really closely, starting with examining “consciousness”s place in Dualist thought. What I’m suggesting if many of us have got a concept from a school of thought you explicitly disagree with embedded in your thinking, and that’s worth looking into. It’s always alluring to dismiss things that run contrary to the existence of something we feel is important, but sometimes those rare times when we question our core values and thought that we make the most profound leaps forward.

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 11:45 UTC
5 points
on: Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014
I posted If we knew about all the ways an Intelligence Explosion could go wrong, would we be able to avoid it? on the LW subreddit recently, in case anyone is interested. I’m not sure how many people read the subreddit. Is this something I should post on here?

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 12:03 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Metus’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014
Well it usually takes the form of people telling you that being highly rational is “over-analysing” or that logic is cold and ignores important emotional considerations of various kinds, or that focusing on rationality ignores the reality that people aren’t machines or that they don’t want to live such a cold and clinical life etc etc. Basically its just “I don’t want to be that rational”. So I wonder, what makes people honestly think “I want to be very rational”? (grammar aplogies lol)

the-citizen 20 Oct 2014 12:18 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014
Well thats semantics in a pretty casual post. Still the link is interesting, thanks. I wonder if anyone has offered a counter-argument along the lines of “rationality is a muscle, not a scarce resource”. But what do you do with someone who doesn’t even think that, but just thinks logic is something for nerds?

the-citizen

A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds prob­lem, ETs and more)

A few thoughts on a Friendly AGI (safe vs friendly, other minds problem, ETs and more)