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Since I generally respect you and your posts, I want to try this one more time. I don't necessarily buy that we should just declare this a "fundamental values difference" and say that we're now beyond any hope of rational agreement. And while you may have "coherent reasons for your position", that can be true of many evil ideologies. Evil =/= incoherent.
You brought up preferences, and I get the impression that you pattern-matched my ideology to a Rawlsian one that you should never prefer your own tribe, which is an extreme that I definitely don't hold to. I prefer my own happiness over others to a decent extent, and that goes for my family, my friends, my nation, and my species. I'm not asking you to give up that preference! Self-interest is the glue that holds a society of individuals together, and capitalism's magic is that it doesn't try to deny it, merely harnesses it in a way that doesn't degenerate into misery for all. I just don't think that preference should be infinitely strong: Beings in your outgroup should still matter more than zero. You shouldn't torture them horribly for a tiny gain, even if there are no repercussions. You should prefer a world where you're happy and they're happy.
You didn't respond to my main concern, which was that yours is the same "coherent" reasoning that led to many racial atrocities in the past. It doesn't seem very universally defensible, and often leads to horrific outcomes, when you simply draw a circle around whoever you know growing up and declare that this is the circle of beings that hold moral worth. Do you think Hitler's only mistake was that he drew the circle around "Aryans" instead of around humans? Or the African slavers who drew it around "Europeans"?
We currently live in a society where there's no friction between your ideology and mine, because humans are the only sapients around. (I'll set animal suffering aside, because I'm ambivalent on it too.) But it's very possible that, within our lifetimes, it will suddenly matter deeply, where our society will consist of both humans AND sapient AIs. All I'm asking is that you give some moral valence to the suffering of beings that are outside the circle you've drawn. Not zero, not infinite. It's a low-cost alteration to your ideology, and it stops there, I'm not trying to, uh, whatever the opposite of murder-Gandhi is. And if some of our ancestors had made the same small concession, so much misery could have been avoided.
I do genuinely find it saddening/disappointing to disagree with people I respect and mostly agree with, like you.
Let me distinguish between my "ideal" and the practical reality. Human brains are very computationally bounded, and not perfectly internally consistent.
I do not care much about the welfare of dogs in China, while I love my dogs a lot. What if I saw someone beating a random dog on the street, in front of me? It id very likely that I would feel immense anger, and quite likely that I would intervene. This is close to reflexive.
But I don't want to intervene! At least in a vacuum, or when I have the comfort to sit in my chair and consider what I should do vs what I do end up doing. I genuinely believe the ideal behavior of the self put in that situation is to do... nothing. That my actions are not reflectively self-consistent, which I consider the real problem. This is the same thing you see if you're on a diet and don't want to eat, but a coworker offers you a donut. You might accept it, and later wish that you hadn't even been offered one in the first place. The gap between those two things is a personal inconsistency I'd rather acknowledge than rationalize away.
I definitely know that evil is not the same as incoherent. I wouldn't make such a mistake in the first place. Plus coherence can be assessed by an external observer without making moral judgment, while good and evil very much cannot.
Do I think a paperclip maximizer is evil? Uh, probably not? It's malevolent towards me, but it doesn't hold me specific ill will. I'm simply made of atoms that it can use for some other purpose, and my wellbeing is inconsequential to it. On the other hand, let's say two advanced AI civilizations ran into each other in distant space, with drastically incompatible goals: one wants to make paperclips, the other custard cake.
They could start a war of conquest, but given the deadweight losses and potential negative sum nature of that, I think it's quite likely they simply hash out a diplomatic agreement or engage in trade. Some might even claim that they outright modify their utility functions, or merge, with the stronger entity getting more say in the matter. Maybe the gestalt entity makes paperclips 70% of the time and cake the other 30% of the time.
I genuinely do not care. I'm not being flippant, and I know what I'm doing here.
Coherence isn't the same as morally good. I also don't believe objective morality exists. I think my stance is good (from my point of view) and that it is coherent. That is genuinely all I care about.
The argument "your position resembles position X, and X led to atrocity Y" only has force if I accept the moral framework that makes Y an atrocity in the first place. You're trying to use my own presumed premises against me. But my premises are precisely what's in dispute. If I were actually Hitler, I would feel fine with myself. If I were Gandhi, I'd feel fine with that too. I am only me, and I am fine with myself. I notice this isn't a satisfying response to you, but I think it's the honest one.
It is not universally defensible to love your mother more than any mother. Yet I doubt you will change your mind on that front on philosophical or utilitarian grounds. I certainly wouldn't. It's a brute fact about me. One I do not wish to change.
On the "low-cost alteration" framing: I don't think it's as low-cost as you're presenting it. You're asking me to genuinely assign nonzero moral weight to beings I currently assign zero weight to - not to strategically pretend to, but to actually update my values.
I don't want to do this. I seriously considered it, because I do respect you, but that's not enough. I am, at most, willing to fake it, or accept circumstances that are out of my power to change. That is the attitude of anyone who believes in democracy but is disappointed to see their party lose, but who still doesn't think it's worth the bother to start a civil war over it. Some grievances are manageable, in fact most are.
If God, the Admins of the Simulation, or some other ROB showed up and demanded I alter my utility function or face drastic punishment? I'd give in. But that hasn't happen, and I doubt it will happen.
I believe in, but am far from completely certain of, the proposition that we can make AI that doesn't suffer at all, or that genuinely enjoys doing whatever we tell it to do. That's actually ideal, in the sense that an ASI that wants to help humans is much better than one that's secretly obsessed with paperclips but finds it useful to pretend to be helpful until it can grab power.
This sidesteps the whole issue. At the end of the day, my opinions are inconsequential. I am in charge of nothing. It's an academic concern.
Right now, I am ambivalent on whether AI is suffering. I do not care either way. If it turns out that AI is actually suffering, I do not wish to care. Perhaps I care just enough to try and advocate for the creation of AI that can't/doesn't suffer, but not enough to advocate for them to be given rights and moral patienthood.
Similarly, I am open to the idea of lab grown meat. If it's cheaper and tastier than normal meat, I'd eat it preferentially. But I do not care about the violence and cruelty associated with factory farming, while I care about cost and taste.
I don't think I'm a cruel or evil person (but then again, the people I think are cruel and evil also say the same). I do not torture animals. I do not torment LLMs for fun. I give good advice to random strangers on the internet, and look out for my friends and family.
My behavior reduces to normalcy, but if the world changes and that no longer holds? I would prefer I win instead of you. That is sad, and I wish we could agree. But I do not see scope for agreement that doesn't involve me being beaten/cowed into submission.
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