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[beaming smile] "Zat could be eezily done with a compjutah!" One person writes calculate_attitudes(person) Another writes calculate_abilities(person) Another

[beaming smile] "Zat could be eezily done with a compjutah!" One person writes calculate_attitudes(person) Another writes calculate_abilities(person) Another writes calculate_desirability(person, calculated_attitudes, calculated_abilities) Another writes determine_spatial_location(person) Another writes parse_list_of_protected_persons(whitelist) Another writes move_to_safe_vantage_point(drone, picked_target, whitelist) Another writes aim_cannon(cannon, spatial_location) Another writes fire_cannon(cannon) Another writes determine_witnesses(spatial_location, timestamp) Then you just feed witness_person, witness_attitudes, witness_abilities into calculate_desirability, and loop it forever, killing the least obedient n%. No involved person really did much, or even anything, as far as they are aware. Especially since you can, as Joseph Weizenbaum -- the one person HN really should know, but really doesn't -- pointed out, design/build/train those algorithms and machines with all sorts of rather benign stuff. E.g. you train for finding missing persons, but then you can also just feed it names and photos of dissidents instead of missing persons. The people "refitting" may know about the people who build them in the first place, but not the other way around.

anon1m0us 7y ago
Yes, that's correct. That's the idea. That is the goal. People are working on this right now. Writing basically, exactly those functions. The survival of humanity has escaped ALL tribal boundaries. The human beings with the most power are the ones contributing the most to our assured destruction. It's basically inevitable. I am not a religious person, but ... has this happened before? Have we destroyed ourselves before? On another planet? Millions of years ago, before the dinosaurs? How could revelations have predicted it so well thousands of years ago, hundreds maybe, before there was any evidence all of this would be happening right now. Lots of religions have these stories about ourselves destroying ourselves and our planet. Indian religions describe it too I know for sure. Battles of the gods in ships with laser like weapons. It's like we are uncontrollably, knowingly, ... desiring of self-destruction as a species. Why are we like this and how do we change us? Maybe I'm insane.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  To give credit where it's due, I kind of took this and ran with it: > It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. -- Nathaniel Borenstein > Why are we like this and how do we change us? Don't take this the wrong way, because I totally "feel you", to put it briefly, but my first thought is, there is no "us": > When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing. -- Hannah Arendt For me it's important to not forget that sociopaths are weak rather than strong, and bluffing rather than laughing. Outside of forms of communications they can dictate and manipulate, that is, without some form of violence or dishonesty, on their own and as themselves, they have nothing, and can be made to implode rather easily. A murdering SS officer is not what sums up this phenomenon, Hitler, in his bunker, blowing his brains out, after blaming everyone with words that are obviously garbage once the claqueurs are gone, is. No, I'm not saying I'm innocent and others are the sole source of evil. But we're still not all the same, it's a spectrum and we're not all in the same spot, and I reject that it's some "average human" doing everything. That's an abstraction, only the actually existing individuals are real, and the worst thing that can happen is not resisting and realizing it was "in vain" (and it never is when it comes to what it makes you as a person), the worst thing that can happen is that we realize we fell for rather mediocre people who faked it until they made it, and that we could have resisted easily (in comparison to the titanium steel gravity well humanity would be in then).

anon1m0us 7y ago

Yes, that's correct. That's the idea. That is the goal. People are working on this right now. Writing basically, exactly those functions. The survival of humanity has escaped ALL tribal boundaries. The human beings with the most power are the ones contributing the most to our assured destruction. It's basically inevitable. I am not a religious person, but ... has this happened before? Have we destroyed ourselves before? On another planet? Millions of years ago, before the dinosaurs? How could revelations have predicted it so well thousands of years ago, hundreds maybe, before there was any evidence all of this would be happening right now. Lots of religions have these stories about ourselves destroying ourselves and our planet. Indian religions describe it too I know for sure. Battles of the gods in ships with laser like weapons. It's like we are uncontrollably, knowingly, ... desiring of self-destruction as a species. Why are we like this and how do we change us? Maybe I'm insane.

PavlovsCat 7y ago
To give credit where it's due, I kind of took this and ran with it: > It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. -- Nathaniel Borenstein > Why are we like this and how do we change us? Don't take this the wrong way, because I totally "feel you", to put it briefly, but my first thought is, there is no "us": > When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing. -- Hannah Arendt For me it's important to not forget that sociopaths are weak rather than strong, and bluffing rather than laughing. Outside of forms of communications they can dictate and manipulate, that is, without some form of violence or dishonesty, on their own and as themselves, they have nothing, and can be made to implode rather easily. A murdering SS officer is not what sums up this phenomenon, Hitler, in his bunker, blowing his brains out, after blaming everyone with words that are obviously garbage once the claqueurs are gone, is. No, I'm not saying I'm innocent and others are the sole source of evil. But we're still not all the same, it's a spectrum and we're not all in the same spot, and I reject that it's some "average human" doing everything. That's an abstraction, only the actually existing individuals are real, and the worst thing that can happen is not resisting and realizing it was "in vain" (and it never is when it comes to what it makes you as a person), the worst thing that can happen is that we realize we fell for rather mediocre people who faked it until they made it, and that we could have resisted easily (in comparison to the titanium steel gravity well humanity would be in then).