xxd

Karma: 3

xxd 27 Jan 2012 18:20 UTC
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in reply to: luzr’s comment on: Not Taking Over the World
Could reach the same point.

Said Eliezer agent is programmed genetically to value his own genes and those of humanity.

An artificial Elizer could reach the conclusion that humanity is worth keeping but is by no means obliged to come to that conclusion. On the contrary, genetics determines that at least some of us humans value the continued existence of humanity.

xxd 27 Jan 2012 18:07 UTC
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in reply to: Uni’s comment on: Not Taking Over the World
This is a cliche and may be false but it’s assumed true: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

I wouldn’t want anybody to have absolute power not even myself, the only possible use of absolute power I would like to have would be to stop any evil person getting it.

To my mind evil = coercion and therefore any human who seeks any kind of coercion over others is evil.

My version of evil is the least evil I believe.

EDIT: Why did I get voted down for saying “power corrupts”—the corrollary of which is rejection of power is less corrupt whereas Eliezer gets voted up for saying exactly the same thing? Someone who voted me down should respond with their reasoning.

xxd 27 Jan 2012 17:59 UTC
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on: Not Taking Over the World
Now this is the $64 google-illion question!

I don’t agree that the null hypothesis: take the ring and do nothing with it is evil. My definition of evil is coercion leading to loss of resources up to and including loss of one’s self. Thus absolute evil is loss of one’s self across humanity which includes as one use case humanity’s extinction (but is not limited to humanity’s extinction obviously because being converted into zimboes isn’t technically extinction..)

Nobody can argue that the likes of Gaddafi exist in the human population: those who are interested in being the total boss of others (even thought they add no value to the lives of others) to the extent that they are willing to kill to maintain their boss position.

I would define these people as evil or with evil intent. I would thus state that I would like under no circumstances somebody like this to grab the ring of power and thus I would be compelled to grab it myself.

The conundrum is that I fit the definition of evil myself. Though I don’t seek power to coerce as an end in itself I would like the power to defend myself against involuntary coercion.

So I see a Gaddafi equivalent go to grab the ring and I beat him to it.

What do I do next?

Well I can’t honestly say that I have the right to kill the millions of Gaddafi equivalent but I think that on average they add a net negative to the utility of humanity.

I’m left, however, with the nagging suspicion that under certain circumstances, Gaddafi type figures might be beneficial to humanity as a whole. Consider: crowdsourcing the majority of political decisions would probably satisfy the average utility function of humanity. It’s fair but not to everybody. We have almost such a system today (even though it’s been usurped by corporations). But in times of crisis such as during war, it’s more efficient to have rapid decisions made by a small group of “experts” combined with those who need to make ruthless decisions so we can’t kill the Gaddafis.

What is therefore optimal in my opinion? I reckon I’d take all the Gaddafis off planet and put them in simulations to be recalled only at times of need and leave sanitized nice people zimbo copies of them. Then I would destroy the ring of power and return to my previous life before I was tempted to torture those who have done me harm in the past.

xxd 26 Jan 2012 22:42 UTC
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on: The Bedrock of Fairness
Xannon decides how much Zaire gets. Zaire decides how much Yancy gets. Yancy decides how much Xannon gets.

If any is left over they go through the process again for the remainder ad infinitum until an approximation of all of the pie has been eaten.

xxd 27 Dec 2011 21:31 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Very Good response. I can’t think of anything to disagree with and I don’t think I have anything more to add to the discussion.

My apologies if you read anything adversarial into my message. My intention was to be pointed in my line of questioning but you responded admirably without evading any questions.

Thanks for the discussion.

xxd 27 Dec 2011 18:31 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Thanks for the suggestion. Yes I already have read it (steal beach). It was OK but didn’t really touch much on our points of contention as such. In fact I’d say it steered clear from them since there wasn’t really the concept of uploads etc. Interestingly, I haven’t read anything that really examines closely whether the copied upload really is you. Anyways.

“I would also say that it doesn’t matter that the vast majority of the cells comprising me twenty years ago are dead, even though the cells currently comprising me aren’t identical to the cells that comprised me then.”

OK I have to say that now I’ve thought it through I think this is a straw man argument that “you’re not the same as you were yesterday” used as a pretext for saying that you’re exactly the same from one moment to the next. It is missing the point entirely.

Although you are legally the same person, it’s true that you’re not exactly physically the same person today as you were yesterday and it’s also true that you have almost none of the original physical matter or cells in you today as you had when you were a child.

That this is true in no way negates the main point: human physical existence at any one point in time does have continuity. I have some of the same cells I had up to about seven to ten years ago. I have some inert matter in me from the time I was born AND I have continual memories to a greater or lesser extent. This is directly analogous to my position that I posted before about a slow hybridizing transition to machine form before I had even clearly thought this out consciously.

Building a copy of yourself and then destroying the original has no continuity. It’s directly analgous to budding asexually a new copy of yourself and then imprinting it with your memories and is patently not the same concept as normal human existence. Not even close.

That you and some others might dismiss the differences is fine and if you hypothetically wanted to take the position that killing yourself so that a copy of your mind state could exist indefinitely then I have no problem with that, but it’s patently not the same as the process you, I and everyone else goes through on a day to day basis. It’s a new thing. (Although it’s already been tried in nature as the asexual budding process of bacteria).

I would appreciate, however, that if that is a choice being offered to others, that it is clearly explained to them what is happening. i.e. physical body death and a copy being resurrected, not that they themselves continue living, because they do not. Whether you consider it irrelevant is besides the point. Volition is very important, but I’ll get to that later.

“I agree with you that if a person is perfectly duplicated and the original killed, then the original has been killed. (I would also say that the person was killed, which I think you would agree with. I would also say that the person survived, which I think you would not agree with.)”

That’s directly analogous to multi worlds interpretation of quantum physics which has multiple timelines. You could argue from that perspective that death is irrelevant because in an infintude of possibilities if one of your instances die then you go on existing. Fine, but it’s not me. I’m mortal and always will be even if some virtual copy of me might not be. So you guessed correctly, unless we’re using some different definition of “person” (which is likely I think) then the person did not survive.

“I agree that volition is important for its own sake, but I don’t understand what volition has to do with what we’ve thus far been discussing. If forcing the original to bud kills the original, then it does so whether the original wants to die or not. If it doesn’t kill the original, then it doesn’t, whether the original wants to die or not. It might be valuable to respect people’s volition, but if so, it’s for some reason independent of their survival. (For example, if they want to die, then respecting their volition is opposed to their survival.)”

Volition has everything to do with it. While it’s true that volition is independent of whether they have died or not (agreed), the reason it’s important is that some people will likely take your position to justify forced destructive scanning at some point because it’s “less wasteful of resources” or some other pretext.

It’s also particularly important in the case of an AI over which humanity would have no control. If the AI decides that uploads via destructive scanning are exactly the same thing as the original, and it needs the space for it’s purposes then there is nothing to stop it from just going ahead unless volition is considered to be important.

Here’s a question for you: Do you have a problem with involuntary forced destructive scanning in order to upload individuals into some other substrate (or even a copied clone)?

So here’s a scenario for you given that you think information is the only important thing: Do you consider a person who has lost much of their memory to be the same person? What if such a person (who has lost much of their memory) then has a backed up copy of their memories from six months ago imprinted over top. Did they just die? What if it’s someone else’s memories: did they just die?

Here’s yet another scenario. I wonder if you have though about this one: Scan a person destructively (with their permission). Keep their scan in storage on some static substrate. Then grow a perfectly identical clone of them (using “identical” to mean functionally indentical because we can’t get exactly identical as discussed before). Copy the contents of the mindstates into that clone.

Ask yourself this question: How many deaths have taken place here?

xxd 22 Dec 2011 20:16 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Other stuff:

“Yes, I would say that if the daughter cell is identical to the parent cell, then it doesn’t matter that the parent cell died at the instant of budding.”

OK good to know. I’ll have other questions but I need to mull it over.

“I would also say that it doesn’t matter that the vast majority of the cells comprising me twenty years ago are dead, even though the cells currently comprising me aren’t identical to the cells that comprised me then.” I agree with this but I don’t think it supports your line of reasoning. I’ll explain why after my meeting this afternoon.

“I agree with you that if a person is perfectly duplicated and the original killed, then the original has been killed. (I would also say that the person was killed, which I think you would agree with. I would also say that the person survived, which I think you would not agree with.)” Interesting. I have a contrary line of argument which I’ll explain this afternoon.

“I agree that volition is important for its own sake, but I don’t understand what volition has to do with what we’ve thus far been discussing. If forcing the original to bud kills the original, then it does so whether the original wants to die or not. If it doesn’t kill the original, then it doesn’t, whether the original wants to die or not. It might be valuable to respect people’s volition, but if so, it’s for some reason independent of their survival. (For example, if they want to die, then respecting their volition is opposed to their survival.)” Disagree. Again I’ll explain why later.

“A question for you: if someone wants to stop existing, and they destructively scan themselves, am I violating their wishes if I construct a perfect duplicate from the scan? I assume your answer is “no,” since the duplicate isn’t them; they stopped existing just as they desired.” Maybe. If you have destructively scanned them then you have killed them so they now no longer exist so that part you have complied perfectly with their wishes from my point of view. But in order to then make a copy, have you asked their permission? Have they signed a contract saying they have given you the right to make copies? Do they even own this right to make copies? I don’t know.

What I can say is that our differences in opinion here would make a superb science fiction story.

xxd 22 Dec 2011 18:40 UTC
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in reply to: dlthomas’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Of course I would do it because it would be better than nothing. My memories would survive. But I would still be dead.

Here’s a thought experiment for you to outline the difference (whether you think it makes sense from your position whether you only value the information or not): Let’s say you could slowly transfer a person into an upload by the following method: You cut out a part of the brain. That part of the brain is now dead. You replace it with a new part, a silicon part (or some computational substrate) that can interface directly with the remaining neurons.

Am I dead? Yes but not all of me is and we’re now left with a hybrid being. It’s not completely me, but I’ve not yet been killed by the process and I get to continue to live and think thoughts (even though part of my thoughts are now happening inside something that isn’t me).

Gradually over a process of time (let’s say years rather than days or minutes or seconds) all of the parts of the brain are replaced.

At the end of it I’m still dead, but my memories live on. I did not survive but some part of the hybrid entity I became is alive and I got the chance to be part of that.

Now I know the position you’d take is that speeding that process up is mathematically equivalent.

It isn’t from my perspective. I’m dead instantly and I don’t get the chance to transition my existence in a meaningful way to me.

Sidetracking a little: I suspect you were comparing your unknown quantity X to some kind of “soul”. I don’t believe in souls. I value being alive and having experiencing and being able to think. To me, dying and then being resurrected on the last day by some superbeing who has rebuilt my atoms using other atoms and then copies my information content into some kind of magical “spirit being” is exactly identical to deconstructing me—killing me—and making a copy even if I took the position that the reconstructed being on “the last day” was me. Which I don’t. As soon as I die that’s me gone, regardless of whether some superbeing reconstructs me later using the same or different atoms (if that were possible).

xxd 22 Dec 2011 18:17 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
EDIT: Yes, you did understand though I can’t personally say that I’m willing to come out and say definitively that the X is a red herring though it sounds like you are willing to do this.

I think it’s an axiomatic difference Dave.

It appears from my side of the table that you’re starting from the axiom that all that’s important is information and that originality and/or physical existence including information means nothing.

And you’re dismissing the quantum states as if they are irrelevant. They may be irrelevant but since there is some difference between the two copies below the macro scale (and the position is different and the atoms are different—though unidentifiably so other than saying that the count is 2x rather than x of atoms) then it’s impossible to dismiss the question “Am I dying when I do this?” because your are making a lossy copy even from your standpoint. The only get-out clause is to say “it’s a close enough copy because the quantum states and position are irrelevant because we can’t measure the difference between atoms in two identical copies on the macro scale other than saying we’ve now got 2X the same atoms whereas before we had 1X).

It’s exactly analogous to a bacteria budding. The original cell dies and close to an exact copy is budded off a. If the daughter bacteria were an exact copy of the information content of the original bacteria then you’d have to say from your position that it’s the same bacteria and the original is not dead right? Or maybe you’d say that it doesn’t matter that the original died.

My response to that argument (if it were the line of reasoning you took—is it?) would be that “it matters volitionally—if the original didn’t want to die and it was forced to bud then it’s been killed).

xxd 22 Dec 2011 16:33 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
“Again, just to be clear, what I’m trying to understand is what you value that I don’t. If data at these high levels of granularity is what you value, then I understand your objection. Is it?”

OK I’ve mulled your question over and I think I have the subtley of what you are asking down as distinct from the slight variation I answered.

Since I value my own life I want to be sure that it’s actually me that’s alive if you plan to kill me. Because we’re basically creating an additional copy really quickly and then disposing of the original I have a hard time believing that we’re doing something equivalent to a single copy walking through a gate.

I don’t believe that just the information by itself is enough to answer the question “Is it the original me?” in affirmative. And given that it’s not even all of the information (though is all of the information on the macro scale) I know for a fact we’re doing a lossy copy. The quantum states are possibly irrelevant on a macro scale for determing is (A == B) but since I knew from physics that they’re not exactly equivalent once you go down to the quantum level I just can’t buy into it though things would be murkier if the quantum states were provably identical.

Does that answer your question?

xxd 22 Dec 2011 16:25 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
I guess from your perspective you could say that the value of being the original doesn’t derive from anything and it’s just a primitive because the macro information is the same except for position (thought the quantum states are all different even at point of copy). But yes I value the original more than the copy because I consider the original to be me and the others to be just copies, even if they would legally and in fact be sentient beings in their own right.

Yes, if I woke up tomorrow and you could convince me I was just a copy then this is something I have already modeled/daydreamed about and my answer would be: I’d be disappointed that I wasn’t the original but glad that I had existence.

xxd 21 Dec 2011 21:59 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Thanks Dave. This has been a very interesting discussion and although I think we can’t close the gap on our positions I’ve really enjoyed it.

To answer your question “what do I value”? I think I answered it already, I valued not being killed.

The difference in our positions appears to be some version “but your information is still around” and my response is “but it’s not me” and your response is “how is it not you?”

I don’t know.

“What is it I value that you don’t?” I don’t know. Maybe I consider myself to be a higher resolution copy or a less lossy copy or something. I can’t put my finger on it because when it comes down to it why do just random quantum states make a difference to me when all the macro information is the same apart from position and perhaps momentum. I don’t really have an answer for that.

xxd 21 Dec 2011 21:55 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
I thought I had answered but perhaps I answered what I read into it.

If you are asking “will I prevent you from gradually moving everything to digital perhaps including yourselves” then the answer is no.

I just wanted to clarify that we were talking about with consent vs without consent.

xxd 21 Dec 2011 20:57 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Yes that’s right.

I will not consent to being involuntarily destructively scanned and yes I will devote all of my resources to prevent myself from being involunarily destructively scanned.

That said, if you or anyone else wants to do it to themselves voluntarily it’s none of my business.

If what you’re really asking, however, is whether I will attempt to intervene if I notice a group of invididuals or an organization forcing destructive scanning on individuals I suspect that I might but we’re not there yet.

xxd 21 Dec 2011 20:49 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
You’re basically asking why I should value myself over a separate in space exact copy of myself (and by exact copy we mean as close as you can get) and then superimposing another question of “isn’t it the information that’s important?”

Not exactly.

I’m concerned that I will die and I’m examining the hyptheses as to why it’s not me that dies. Best as I can come up with the response is “you will die but it doesn’t matter because there’s another identical (or close as possible) copy still around.

As to what you value that I don’t I don’t have an answer. Perhaps a way to elicit the answer would be to ask you the question of why you only value the information and not the physical object also?

xxd 21 Dec 2011 19:45 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
“If the information is different, and the information constitutes people, then it constitutes different people.”

True and therein lies the problem. Let’s do two comparisons: You have two copies. One the original, the other the copy.

Compare them on the macro scale (i.e. non quantum). They are identical except for position and momentum.

Now let’s compare them on the quantum scale: Even at the point where they are identical on the macro scale, they are not identical on the quantum scale. All the quantum states are different. Just the simple act of observing the states (either by scanning it or by rebuilding it) changes it and thus on the quantum scale we have two different entities even though they are identical on the macro scale except for position and momentum.

Using your argument that it’s the information content that’s important, they don’t really have any useful differences from an information content especially not on the macro scale but they have significant differences in all of their non useful quantum states. They are physically different entities.

Basically what you’re talking about is using a lossy algorithm to copy the individuals. At the level of detail you care about they are the same. At a higher level of detail they are distinct.

I’m thus uncomfortable with killing one of them and then saying the person still exists.

xxd 21 Dec 2011 19:36 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
This is a different point entirely. Sure it’s more efficient to just work with instances of similar objects and I’ve already said elsewhere I’m OK with that if it’s objects.

And if everyone else is OK with being destructively scanned then I guess I’ll have to eke out an existence as a savage. The economy can have my atoms after I’m dead.

xxd 21 Dec 2011 19:31 UTC
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
I understand that you value the information content and I’m OK with your position.

Let’s do another tought experiment then: Say we’re some unknown X number of years in the future and some foreign entity/government/whatever decided it wanted the territory of the United States (could be any country, just using the USA as an example) but didn’t want the people. It did, however, value the ideas, opinions, memories etc of the American people. If said entity then destructively scanned the landmass but painstakingly copied all of the ideas, opinions, memories etc into some kind of data store which it could access at it’s leisure later then would that be the same thing as the original living people?

I’d argue that from a comp sci perspective what you have just done is built a static class which describes the people, their ideas, memories etc but this is not the original people it’s just a model of them.

Now don’t get me wrong, a model like that would be very valuable, it just wouldn’t be the original.

And yes, of course some people value originals otherwise you wouldn’t have to pay millions of dollars for postage stamps printed in the 1800s even though I’d guess that scanning that stamp and printing out a copy of it should to all intents and purposes be the same.

xxd 21 Dec 2011 19:17 UTC
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in reply to: dlthomas’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Exactly. Reasonable assurance is good enough, absolute isn’t necessary. I’m not willing to be destructively scanned even if a copy of me thinks it’s me, looks like me, and acts like me.

That said I’m willing to accept the other stance that others take: they believe they are reasonably convinced that destructive scanning just means they will appear somewhere else a fraction of a second (or however long it takes). Just don’t ask me to do it. And expect a bullet if you try to force me!

xxd 21 Dec 2011 19:12 UTC
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
What do I make of his argument? Well I’m not a PHD in Physics though I do have a Bachelors in Physics/Math so my position would be the following:

Quantum physics doesn’t scale up to macro. While swapping the two helium atoms in two billiard balls results in you not being able to tell which helium atom was which, the two billiard balls certainly can be distinguished from each other. Even “teleporting” one from one place to another will not result in an identical copy since the quantum states will all have changed just by dint of having been read by the scanning device. Each time you measure, quantum state changes so the reason why you cannot distinguish two identical copies from each other is not because they are identical it’s just that you cannot even distinguish the original from itself because the states change each time you measure them.

A macro scale object composed of multiple atoms A, B and C could not distinguish the atoms from another macro scale object composed of multiple atoms of type A, B and C in exactly the same configuration.

That said, we’re talking about a single object here. As soon as you go to comparing more than one single object it’s not the same: there is position, momentum et cetera of the macro scale objects to distinguish them even though they are the same type of object.

I strongly believe that the disagreement around this topic comes from looking at things as classes from a comp sci perspective.

From a physics perspective it makes sense to say two objects of the same type are different even though the properties are the same except for minor differences such as position and momentum.

From a compsci perspective, talking about the position and momentum of instances of classes doesn’t make any sense. The two instances of the classes ARE the same because they are logically the same.

Anyways I’ve segwayed here: Take the two putative electrons in a previous post above: there is no way to distinguish between the two of them except by position but they ARE two separate electrons, they’re not a single electron. If one of them is part of e.g. my brain and then it’s swapped out for the other then there’s no longer any way to tell which is which. It’s impossible. And my guess is this is what’s causing the confusion. From a point of view of usefulness neither of the two objects is different from each other. But they are separate from each other and destroying one doesn’t mean that there are still two of them, there are now only one and one has been destroyed.

Dave seems to take the position that that is fine because the position and number of copies are irrelevant for him because it’s the information content that’s important.

For me, sure if my information content lived on that would be better than nothing but it wouldn’t be me.