6 ms·

I think if I seriously thought all biological life was about to be destroyed, I could get over my distaste for bombing data centers.

• Analemma_ 4y ago
  No, that doesn't follow. It's possible to think that all biological life was about to be destroyed but also believe some combination of 1) it's hopeless to bomb data centers because I'd quickly be stopped by the authorities and remaining data centers would beef up security, and nothing would be accomplished, 2) in the past, other people who have had beliefs of this sort ("violence is the only answer") have been wrong and I should not act on them even if I am sure "this time is different", because those other people also thought this time was different, and 3) just having a deeply ethically-ingrained prohibition against violence like this which is not easy to overcome through intellectual rationalization alone. These are not mutually exclusive, and if you did believe all of them at once, I think it's reasonable to assume you'd be in a serious depressive spiral.
  • Imnimo 4y ago
    Israel believes that Iran having a nuclear weapon is an existential threat. What do they do? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nucle... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Iran_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Iran_explosions I find it hard to believe that Yudkowsky et al. think we're facing a threat that is many times greater in magnitude, and yet are completely unwilling to act. Here's what he advocates for in the article: >If intelligence says that a country outside the agreement is building a GPU cluster, be less scared of a shooting conflict between nations than of the moratorium being violated; be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike. >Make it explicit in international diplomacy that preventing AI extinction scenarios is considered a priority above preventing a full nuclear exchange, and that allied nuclear countries are willing to run some risk of nuclear exchange if that’s what it takes to reduce the risk of large AI training runs. Does this sound like someone who has a deeply ethically-ingrained prohibition against violence?
    • jamilton 4y ago
      The government of Israel is not particularly known for being ethical.
      • Imnimo 4y ago
        If Yudkowsky believes Israel's brand of preventative saboutage to be unethical, why does he advocate for exactly that style of measure to be taken against data centers in this very article?
  • cma 4y ago
    Yudkowsky is an avowed extreme utilitarian of the "take a person from the street and kill him if his organs could save two people, as long as there is forced pill everyone would take so that everyone doesnt get nervous it that could happen to them" type. Of the "unless the population was really large and the pill would hurt their throats for more utilons than gained by the net increase in life" type. A real argument he made went something like: killing an orphan to avoid everyone in the future getting a spec in their eye for a moment is ok. It is very unlikely he believes anything like 2 or 3 and in the article already advocates bombing non treaty participants if they build a datacenter.
    • arisAlexis 4y ago
      Sources for this character assassination of a scientist that tried to save the world by creating the ai safety field in research?
      • cma 4y ago
        I went back and looked it up, the piece he wrote is called "Torture vs Dust Specks." The part about bombing countries who build data centers is in the submission editorial.
        • arisAlexis 4y ago
          This is misinterpreted, he calls for an international treaty backed by military. One sees what he wants to see.
          • cma 4y ago
            I already mentioned the treaty: > already advocates bombing non treaty participants if they build a datacenter.
            • arisAlexis 4y ago
              You seem to misunderstand what an international ban treaty is. Nuclear proliferation ban included non signatories etc.
  • anigbrowl 4y ago
    But he's already in favor of bombing data centers, he just hopes someone else will do it on his behalf. So he clearly doesn't care about #2 & 3. #1 boils down to the fact that it would be kind of difficult, but that is no barrier to many people. I can tell you for a fact that there are people with the knowledge, motivation, and track record of doing that kind of crime that will pick up this jeremiad of his and incorporate it into their existing corpus of theoretic justifications, mostly but not exclusively built around the writings of Ted Kaczynski. Not a large number of people, fortunately, but imagination and smarts matter more than numbers in that context.
  • maxerickson 4y ago
    I think of this as the inordinate power of advocacy. It can seem useless to advocate some position that is far out there, but say you convince a million people to use a little less plastic. That's gonna reduce plastic use more than anything you can personally accomplish. Of course in this scenario you don't have to convince some people, you have to convince everyone, and then especially the people you think are the worst actors, so it's sort of unlikely to be effective.
• hackinthebochs 4y ago
  It's blatantly self-serving for you to decide that "if someone really believed X, they would do Y". All it does is justify your belief that no one actually believes X. You should really avoid these kinds of unfalsifiable thought patterns that only serve to reenforce your pre-existing beliefs.
  • arbitrary_name 4y ago
    This argument is similar to the facile arguments that "al gore doesn't care about climate change because he takes a private plane too get to conferences". Al Gore may believe that the net impact of getting his message out may overwhelm the cost of his flights. Likewise, the author may believe that his best path to stopping the advance of ai may lie in communicating and building consensus, rather than running his own bombing campaign.