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> there are at least some core values that I believe a majority of humans share. Really? What are those? Given that there are entire countries that refuse to,

> there are at least some core values that I believe a majority of humans share. Really? What are those? Given that there are entire countries that refuse to, oh idk. punish things like rape adequately, and that we have nation states who happily tout their ability to burn down the planet, I'd really love to hear about these core values we all share.

drdeca 3y ago
At the most basic level: “don’t go into a town and pick a random person to murder”
- usrbinbash 3y ago
  > At the most basic level: “don’t go into a town and pick a random person to murder” https://pledgetimes.com/russian-attack-the-traces-of-the-retreating-russians-reveal-more-and-more-gruesome-atrocities-bodies-burned-in-butcha-on-the-streets-and-a-mass-grave-of-civilians/ https://pledgetimes.com/russian-attack-the-traces-of-the-ret... My point isn't to say shared core values don't exist. They clearly do, that's why we call what's happening over in Ukraine war crimes. That's why the notion of humanitarianism exists, that's why laws against murder, rape, etc. are commonplace. My point is, that humans are, unfortunatly, able to willfully ignore even such basic shared values, and our technology does reflect that. Murder is bad. War is to be avoided. That's not in question. And yet societies develop and build ever more ingenious weapons of war. So "aligning by shared core values" might pose difficulties beyond the, already pretty difficult, task of defining these values in unambiguous and workable terms to a machine.
  - drdeca 3y ago
    well, the comment was about "the majority of humans", not even like, specifically "90%+ of humans" or something like that. I'm pretty sure that the majority of humans would agree that the type of random-murder I described, is wrong. I don't know what fraction of people are moral nihilists or subscribers to more extreme forms of moral relativism, but if excluding those, then of the remaining people, I think the proportion who agree with the value I mentioned, is probably pretty dang high!

drdeca 3y ago

At the most basic level: “don’t go into a town and pick a random person to murder”

usrbinbash 3y ago
> At the most basic level: “don’t go into a town and pick a random person to murder” https://pledgetimes.com/russian-attack-the-traces-of-the-retreating-russians-reveal-more-and-more-gruesome-atrocities-bodies-burned-in-butcha-on-the-streets-and-a-mass-grave-of-civilians/ https://pledgetimes.com/russian-attack-the-traces-of-the-ret... My point isn't to say shared core values don't exist. They clearly do, that's why we call what's happening over in Ukraine war crimes. That's why the notion of humanitarianism exists, that's why laws against murder, rape, etc. are commonplace. My point is, that humans are, unfortunatly, able to willfully ignore even such basic shared values, and our technology does reflect that. Murder is bad. War is to be avoided. That's not in question. And yet societies develop and build ever more ingenious weapons of war. So "aligning by shared core values" might pose difficulties beyond the, already pretty difficult, task of defining these values in unambiguous and workable terms to a machine.
- drdeca 3y ago
  well, the comment was about "the majority of humans", not even like, specifically "90%+ of humans" or something like that. I'm pretty sure that the majority of humans would agree that the type of random-murder I described, is wrong. I don't know what fraction of people are moral nihilists or subscribers to more extreme forms of moral relativism, but if excluding those, then of the remaining people, I think the proportion who agree with the value I mentioned, is probably pretty dang high!