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So your moral compass isn't based on compassion or ethical reasoning, it's just based on social consensus? So I guess you would have been fine with being a con

So your moral compass isn't based on compassion or ethical reasoning, it's just based on social consensus? So I guess you would have been fine with being a concentration camp guard, rounding up Jews and putting them in the oven because social consensus said it was the right thing to do? Maybe you see the logic as shaky because you lack knowledge in logic and ethics...?

GuB-42 2y ago
Honestly, I don't know how I would have been as a concentration camp guard. In my mind, I wouldn't have accepted it, because thankfully, I am not in this situation. But if I really was in this situation, who knows, we tend to underestimate how easily influenced we are. Ethics gives us more questions than answers. The trolley problem doesn't have a true answer for instance. The human rights are a social consensus, it is even made explicit by being a signed declaration. It felt good to the people who wrote them, it also feels good to me, because I was born and live in a society that has these values. It is only truth because by social consensus, we decided it is. In logic that would be an axiom and aligning an AI would mean implementing social consensus as axioms. There are some fundamental reasoning that can justify human rights. One can use game theory, or the idea that human rights promote free thinking and free thinking is what brings the most value out of people now that machines do better than slaves for menial labor. But these are, I think, not enough.
- FloorEgg 2y ago
  I think you got it in your last paragraph. Absolutely NOT social consensus as axioms, as that will result in stagnation and tyranny. Instead we must progress gradually one axiom at a time through reasoning and experimentation. Truth is not what we decide it is, truth is what works. The universe decides what is true, not people. Re your comment: "but these are, I think, not enough". I both agree and disagree depending on what you mean. Fundamentally this approach is enough, but practically we haven't developed our understanding enough to map out absolute truth. It's probably something we can only approach but never reach. But in theory the right AI system could allow us to approach the faster

GuB-42 2y ago

Honestly, I don't know how I would have been as a concentration camp guard. In my mind, I wouldn't have accepted it, because thankfully, I am not in this situation. But if I really was in this situation, who knows, we tend to underestimate how easily influenced we are. Ethics gives us more questions than answers. The trolley problem doesn't have a true answer for instance. The human rights are a social consensus, it is even made explicit by being a signed declaration. It felt good to the people who wrote them, it also feels good to me, because I was born and live in a society that has these values. It is only truth because by social consensus, we decided it is. In logic that would be an axiom and aligning an AI would mean implementing social consensus as axioms. There are some fundamental reasoning that can justify human rights. One can use game theory, or the idea that human rights promote free thinking and free thinking is what brings the most value out of people now that machines do better than slaves for menial labor. But these are, I think, not enough.

FloorEgg 2y ago
I think you got it in your last paragraph. Absolutely NOT social consensus as axioms, as that will result in stagnation and tyranny. Instead we must progress gradually one axiom at a time through reasoning and experimentation. Truth is not what we decide it is, truth is what works. The universe decides what is true, not people. Re your comment: "but these are, I think, not enough". I both agree and disagree depending on what you mean. Fundamentally this approach is enough, but practically we haven't developed our understanding enough to map out absolute truth. It's probably something we can only approach but never reach. But in theory the right AI system could allow us to approach the faster