6 ms·

It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. "The ends don't justify the

It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept. It is not irrational or incoherent to believe that even something as serious as extinction does not justify arbitrary action. Someone _may_ decide that it does, but it is not a necessary conclusion. And that is completely aside from the many many (in my opinion convincing) arguments that such acts of violence would not be effective anyways. This article is a much better (and much longer) extension of the argument and direct refutation of the OP article https://thezvi.substack.com/p/political-violence-is-never-acceptable https://thezvi.substack.com/p/political-violence-is-never-ac...

Joker_vD 6mo ago
> "The ends don't justify the means" Eh. The ends do justify the means, but only inasmuch as those means actually do help to achieve the ends — astonishingly often, they don't (and rarer, but also often, actually bring you in the opposite direction from those end goals), and so remain unjustified.
- MostlyStable 6mo ago
  I personally believe quite strongly that some things are just immoral on their face and that I would rather fail/die without using them than succeed/live while using them. I agree that in very many cases where people do these things, they are, in the long run, counter productive, but I also believe that even if could be conclusively proven that this wasn't the case, I would still advocate against their use.
- f1shy 6mo ago
  Thanks. That sentence is constantly repeated, as if it would be some kind of absolute truth. The fact is, for every end, there will be probably some means that are totally justified, and some that not. I think the original context is: no matter how high, pure and perfect the end is, it does not meany any mean is justified.
  - kgwgk 6mo ago
    According to Jocker_vD it’s only the means that won’t help that wouldn’t be justified.
- BurningFrog 6mo ago
  I agree, but it's only half of the equation. Your solution also can't be worse than the problem it solves! Overly clear example: Killing your noisy neighbors actually achieves the end of a quiet home. But that really doesn't justify it.
morningsam 6mo ago
Yudkowsky himself also posted a rebuttal today: https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/article/2043601524815716866 https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/article/2043601524815716866
- doctorpangloss 6mo ago
  I find all of this stuff very interesting but nonetheless these two voices sound like they could never win an election and aspire not to. That is the ultimate test of the worthlessness of a policy - it's all equally worthless until it wins an election, and that's what makes it reality. AI Doomerism versus Accelerationism are both playful fantasies, it doesn't really matter what measurements or probabilities or observations they make, because the substantive part is the policies they advocate for, and policies are meaningless - all equally worthless - until elected. What am I saying? The best rebuttal is, get elected.
  - lazyasciiart 6mo ago
    Iran's leadership seems to be a solid rebuttal of that argument.
  - gom_jabbar 6mo ago
    The interesting thing is that, for the "Father of Accelerationism" (Nick Land), AI Doomerism (doom for humans, at least for human identity) and Accelerationism (which for Land is just another label for capitalism: 'The label "accelerationism" exists because "capitalismism" would be too awkward.'[0]) are not opposed at all. And capitalism does not need to get elected. (Land follows the above quote with "(But the reflexivity of the latter [capitalismism] is implicit.)"[0], which specifies that, for Land, more precisely, "Accelerationism is simply the self-awareness of capitalism"[1].) [0] Nick Land (2018). Outsideness: 2013-2023, Noumena Institute, p. 71. [1] Nick Land (2017). A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism in Jacobite Magazine. Retrieved from github.com/cyborg-nomade/reignition
    - doctorpangloss 6mo ago
      i don't know, to me they are very different things - accelerationists might be really calling for Better Capitalismism, but that's only because chatbots (the thing you are accelerating) are really good at math, and math is important for making money. if it weren't good at making money, literally nobody would care, kids would not be CS and math majors, they wouldn't care about STEM. they only care because $. But most real problems, including human problems, are not math problems. this is a huge blind spot in the whole, rationalist and broader STEM cultural-professional community: math isn't the best way to solve problems, most problems are not math problems. SOME of school might be math problems, and it feels good to be a Doctor or a Software Developer Engineer and get your kids to practice "problem solving" - no, they are practicing math problems, not problem solving. for example there's no math answer to whether or not a piece of land should be a parking lot, or an apartment building, or a homeless shelter, or... you can see how just saying, "whoever is the highest bidder" - that's the math answer, that's why capitalism and accelerationism are related to their core - isn't a good answer. it pretends to be the dominant way we organize land, and of course, it isn't the dominant way we organize land usage anywhere at all, even if we pretend it is. there's no "bidding" for whether a curb should be a disabled parking spot, or a bike lane, or parking, or a restaurant seating, or a parklet, or... these are aesthetic, cultural choices, with meaningless economic tradeoffs. it's not about money, so it's not about math, so math does not provide an answer. there are lots of essential human questions that cannot even be market priced, such as, what should we pay to invent new cures to congenital, terminal illness in children? parents, and a lot of people, would pay "any" price, which is a market failure - but there are a lot of useful political answers to that question. a chatbot cannot answer that question, and it would struggle to take leadership and get elected to answer that question. mathematicians are basically never elected. so chatbots would not be. and elezier yudlowsky would not be. are you getting it? capitalism does definitely need to be elected, you might think it wins every election but it very often loses at the local level! i am agreeing with Hashem Sarkis dean of the MIT SAP and kind of disagreeing with Bong Joon-Ho, for further reading.
hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago
The older I get, the more I get the sneaking suspicion that statements like "the ends don't justify the means" and "violence is always the wrong answer" are, at best, wildly logically inconsistent in any society at any time, and at worst, designed to ensure only a very few people in power can commit violence. An ongoing conflict has resulted in the violent deaths of literally many thousands of children. The people who enable those deaths are usually safely ensconced thousands of miles away, often living in cushy suburbs. To emphasize as strongly as I possibly can, I am not advocating for more violence. Quite the contrary, I'm advocating for less. I just don't understand why we have all these adages to convince people that "violence is always wrong", while I'm sure some at least some of the people who say that are actively engaged in building machines designed to kill people. Related, the Substack link you posted is titled "Political Violence is Never The Answer". But our country (and a lot of them) were literally founded on political violence. How do people square those 2 ideas?
- slopinthebag 6mo ago
  Even more simply put, if political violence is never the answer and the institution of government is the biggest single source of political violence, what does that say about the legitimacy of the institution of government? These trite quips act as a way to ensure only the elite ruling class has a justification for the violence they inflict.
- solaarphunk 6mo ago
  This is just a version of individualism vs the state. Much of western society has become increasingly confused about what violence is acceptable, let alone who should be allowed to commit violence, or have a monopoly on violence. If we can't agree on that baseline, then its quite obvious that we'll continue to have an escalation in the types of violence that we've seen in the past few years, against the political and corporate classes in the US, with very little end in sight.
  - antonvs 6mo ago
    > If we can't agree on that baseline Part of the point about violence is it has little to do with societal agreement, to start with. It's what happens when that agreement breaks down. And in the end, it can change the agreement.
janalsncm 6mo ago
Your reasoning makes sense under a regime of infinite games. In other words, the goal is to continue playing the game rather than win once. These people do not believe we are in an infinite game. They believe they have a narrow set of moves to avoid checkmate, and apparently getting rid of Sam Altman is one of them. I will suggest another reason though: we are likely already in the light cone of continued AI development. So none of the vigilante actions are justified under their own logic. It’s probably preferable to avoid being in jail when the robot apocalypse comes. I don’t think the death of Sam Altman or even the dissolution of OpenAI would stop the continuation of AI development. There are too many actors involved, and too many companies and nation states invested in continuing AI development. Even Eliezer Yudkowsky became president of the United States he could not stop it.
- matthewdgreen 6mo ago
  Eliezer Yudkowsky has gone so far as to say that it might be ok to kill most of humanity (excepting a "viable reproduction population") to stop AI. If that's not just talk, then this line reasoning only gives you a few possible modes of action. I would not be worried about the people with Molotov cocktails, but I'd be very worried about bio terrorism.
  - hollerith 6mo ago
    >Eliezer Yudkowsky has gone so far as to say that it might be ok to kill most of humanity (excepting a "viable reproduction population") to stop AI That doesn't sound like a non-misleading summary of anything he would say. Do you have a quote or a link?
    - janalsncm 6mo ago
      Apparently he deleted the tweet but there are screenshots and he apologized. https://betweendrafts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/survivors.jpeg https://betweendrafts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/survivo... https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1642229374656348161 https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1642229374656348161
atmavatar 6mo ago
> "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept. Most religions rely on a supernatural force judging us post-mortem to balance out the rights and wrongs done during life. The problem with this, of course, is that there's zero evidence this force exists, and relying on this force to right the wrongs in life only serves to prevent the masses from attempting to correct the wrongs themselves either directly via vigilantism or, more importantly, by replacing existing systems with ones which will serve them better. I'm all for fixing things first via the soap box and ballot box, but sometimes the ammo box is the only resort left. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson I don't believe we're at that point in the US, but I could certainly understand someone making that claim for a country like Iran.
- janalsncm 6mo ago
  > The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. When the British cavalry came to Virginia in 1781, Thomas Jefferson famously fled the governor’s mansion.
  - esseph 6mo ago
    > When the British cavalry came to Virginia in 1781, Thomas Jefferson famously fled the governor’s mansion. Yes, rather than stay and get captured by British dragoons, he left. This became a rallying cry by the Federalists (who would love the current power structure in the US right now). The act was investigated by the Virginia General Assembly and found that he had done nothing wrong. (Staying would have been extremely dumb)
coldtea 6mo ago
>It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. Yes, it's called "fatalism".
classified 6mo ago
So according to you the War for Independence of the US against England never happened, and it would have been completely ineffective if it had happened. Same goes for the French Revolution. The list could go on. I think you're overly idealistic.

Joker_vD 6mo ago

> "The ends don't justify the means" Eh. The ends do justify the means, but only inasmuch as those means actually do help to achieve the ends — astonishingly often, they don't (and rarer, but also often, actually bring you in the opposite direction from those end goals), and so remain unjustified.

MostlyStable 6mo ago
I personally believe quite strongly that some things are just immoral on their face and that I would rather fail/die without using them than succeed/live while using them. I agree that in very many cases where people do these things, they are, in the long run, counter productive, but I also believe that even if could be conclusively proven that this wasn't the case, I would still advocate against their use.
f1shy 6mo ago
Thanks. That sentence is constantly repeated, as if it would be some kind of absolute truth. The fact is, for every end, there will be probably some means that are totally justified, and some that not. I think the original context is: no matter how high, pure and perfect the end is, it does not meany any mean is justified.
- kgwgk 6mo ago
  According to Jocker_vD it’s only the means that won’t help that wouldn’t be justified.
BurningFrog 6mo ago
I agree, but it's only half of the equation. Your solution also can't be worse than the problem it solves! Overly clear example: Killing your noisy neighbors actually achieves the end of a quiet home. But that really doesn't justify it.

morningsam 6mo ago

Yudkowsky himself also posted a rebuttal today: https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/article/2043601524815716866 https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/article/2043601524815716866

doctorpangloss 6mo ago
I find all of this stuff very interesting but nonetheless these two voices sound like they could never win an election and aspire not to. That is the ultimate test of the worthlessness of a policy - it's all equally worthless until it wins an election, and that's what makes it reality. AI Doomerism versus Accelerationism are both playful fantasies, it doesn't really matter what measurements or probabilities or observations they make, because the substantive part is the policies they advocate for, and policies are meaningless - all equally worthless - until elected. What am I saying? The best rebuttal is, get elected.
- lazyasciiart 6mo ago
  Iran's leadership seems to be a solid rebuttal of that argument.
- gom_jabbar 6mo ago
  The interesting thing is that, for the "Father of Accelerationism" (Nick Land), AI Doomerism (doom for humans, at least for human identity) and Accelerationism (which for Land is just another label for capitalism: 'The label "accelerationism" exists because "capitalismism" would be too awkward.'[0]) are not opposed at all. And capitalism does not need to get elected. (Land follows the above quote with "(But the reflexivity of the latter [capitalismism] is implicit.)"[0], which specifies that, for Land, more precisely, "Accelerationism is simply the self-awareness of capitalism"[1].) [0] Nick Land (2018). Outsideness: 2013-2023, Noumena Institute, p. 71. [1] Nick Land (2017). A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism in Jacobite Magazine. Retrieved from github.com/cyborg-nomade/reignition
  - doctorpangloss 6mo ago
    i don't know, to me they are very different things - accelerationists might be really calling for Better Capitalismism, but that's only because chatbots (the thing you are accelerating) are really good at math, and math is important for making money. if it weren't good at making money, literally nobody would care, kids would not be CS and math majors, they wouldn't care about STEM. they only care because $. But most real problems, including human problems, are not math problems. this is a huge blind spot in the whole, rationalist and broader STEM cultural-professional community: math isn't the best way to solve problems, most problems are not math problems. SOME of school might be math problems, and it feels good to be a Doctor or a Software Developer Engineer and get your kids to practice "problem solving" - no, they are practicing math problems, not problem solving. for example there's no math answer to whether or not a piece of land should be a parking lot, or an apartment building, or a homeless shelter, or... you can see how just saying, "whoever is the highest bidder" - that's the math answer, that's why capitalism and accelerationism are related to their core - isn't a good answer. it pretends to be the dominant way we organize land, and of course, it isn't the dominant way we organize land usage anywhere at all, even if we pretend it is. there's no "bidding" for whether a curb should be a disabled parking spot, or a bike lane, or parking, or a restaurant seating, or a parklet, or... these are aesthetic, cultural choices, with meaningless economic tradeoffs. it's not about money, so it's not about math, so math does not provide an answer. there are lots of essential human questions that cannot even be market priced, such as, what should we pay to invent new cures to congenital, terminal illness in children? parents, and a lot of people, would pay "any" price, which is a market failure - but there are a lot of useful political answers to that question. a chatbot cannot answer that question, and it would struggle to take leadership and get elected to answer that question. mathematicians are basically never elected. so chatbots would not be. and elezier yudlowsky would not be. are you getting it? capitalism does definitely need to be elected, you might think it wins every election but it very often loses at the local level! i am agreeing with Hashem Sarkis dean of the MIT SAP and kind of disagreeing with Bong Joon-Ho, for further reading.

hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago

The older I get, the more I get the sneaking suspicion that statements like "the ends don't justify the means" and "violence is always the wrong answer" are, at best, wildly logically inconsistent in any society at any time, and at worst, designed to ensure only a very few people in power can commit violence. An ongoing conflict has resulted in the violent deaths of literally many thousands of children. The people who enable those deaths are usually safely ensconced thousands of miles away, often living in cushy suburbs. To emphasize as strongly as I possibly can, I am not advocating for more violence. Quite the contrary, I'm advocating for less. I just don't understand why we have all these adages to convince people that "violence is always wrong", while I'm sure some at least some of the people who say that are actively engaged in building machines designed to kill people. Related, the Substack link you posted is titled "Political Violence is Never The Answer". But our country (and a lot of them) were literally founded on political violence. How do people square those 2 ideas?

slopinthebag 6mo ago
Even more simply put, if political violence is never the answer and the institution of government is the biggest single source of political violence, what does that say about the legitimacy of the institution of government? These trite quips act as a way to ensure only the elite ruling class has a justification for the violence they inflict.
solaarphunk 6mo ago
This is just a version of individualism vs the state. Much of western society has become increasingly confused about what violence is acceptable, let alone who should be allowed to commit violence, or have a monopoly on violence. If we can't agree on that baseline, then its quite obvious that we'll continue to have an escalation in the types of violence that we've seen in the past few years, against the political and corporate classes in the US, with very little end in sight.
- antonvs 6mo ago
  > If we can't agree on that baseline Part of the point about violence is it has little to do with societal agreement, to start with. It's what happens when that agreement breaks down. And in the end, it can change the agreement.

janalsncm 6mo ago

Your reasoning makes sense under a regime of infinite games. In other words, the goal is to continue playing the game rather than win once. These people do not believe we are in an infinite game. They believe they have a narrow set of moves to avoid checkmate, and apparently getting rid of Sam Altman is one of them. I will suggest another reason though: we are likely already in the light cone of continued AI development. So none of the vigilante actions are justified under their own logic. It’s probably preferable to avoid being in jail when the robot apocalypse comes. I don’t think the death of Sam Altman or even the dissolution of OpenAI would stop the continuation of AI development. There are too many actors involved, and too many companies and nation states invested in continuing AI development. Even Eliezer Yudkowsky became president of the United States he could not stop it.

matthewdgreen 6mo ago
Eliezer Yudkowsky has gone so far as to say that it might be ok to kill most of humanity (excepting a "viable reproduction population") to stop AI. If that's not just talk, then this line reasoning only gives you a few possible modes of action. I would not be worried about the people with Molotov cocktails, but I'd be very worried about bio terrorism.
- hollerith 6mo ago
  >Eliezer Yudkowsky has gone so far as to say that it might be ok to kill most of humanity (excepting a "viable reproduction population") to stop AI That doesn't sound like a non-misleading summary of anything he would say. Do you have a quote or a link?
  - janalsncm 6mo ago
    Apparently he deleted the tweet but there are screenshots and he apologized. https://betweendrafts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/survivors.jpeg https://betweendrafts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/survivo... https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1642229374656348161 https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1642229374656348161

atmavatar 6mo ago

> "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept. Most religions rely on a supernatural force judging us post-mortem to balance out the rights and wrongs done during life. The problem with this, of course, is that there's zero evidence this force exists, and relying on this force to right the wrongs in life only serves to prevent the masses from attempting to correct the wrongs themselves either directly via vigilantism or, more importantly, by replacing existing systems with ones which will serve them better. I'm all for fixing things first via the soap box and ballot box, but sometimes the ammo box is the only resort left. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson I don't believe we're at that point in the US, but I could certainly understand someone making that claim for a country like Iran.

janalsncm 6mo ago
> The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. When the British cavalry came to Virginia in 1781, Thomas Jefferson famously fled the governor’s mansion.
- esseph 6mo ago
  > When the British cavalry came to Virginia in 1781, Thomas Jefferson famously fled the governor’s mansion. Yes, rather than stay and get captured by British dragoons, he left. This became a rallying cry by the Federalists (who would love the current power structure in the US right now). The act was investigated by the Virginia General Assembly and found that he had done nothing wrong. (Staying would have been extremely dumb)

coldtea 6mo ago

>It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. Yes, it's called "fatalism".

classified 6mo ago

So according to you the War for Independence of the US against England never happened, and it would have been completely ineffective if it had happened. Same goes for the French Revolution. The list could go on. I think you're overly idealistic.