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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1868 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Would AGI, or ASI, affect the morality of human slavery? A common objection to slavery is that while there are many humans fit to be slaves/unfit to be free, see gent zombies, no humans are fit to be masters since basically all humans inevitably abuse such authority.

A sufficiently aligned AGI or ASI solves that problem. It’s aligned, so it follows the morals given to it. Assuming we can align AGI or ASI, would slavery to it be moral for certain subclasses of humans?

EDIT: Fent Zombies, not gent zombies.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone make that particular objection to slavery. Is it, like, a neoreactionary talking point? A non-Western one?

C. S. Lewis did once write this:

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure.

I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours.

The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

I take this argument as saying, "If we did have men, or artificial men, fit to be masters, would slavery then be acceptable?"

I don't think Lewis himself would agree with that. I think in the above passage he's engaging in a kind of Chestertonian inversion - and not so much agreeing with Aristotle that some men are fit to be slaves as he is saying that it doesn't matter, because notwithstanding whether or not there are 'natural slaves', there are no 'natural masters'. Moreover Lewis' theology would certainly say that the Fall applies also to our machines. How could machines made by humans and fed on human knowledge not inherit the fallenness of humanity?

This originates, in the modern tradition, from Hobbes - he argued that no man knows another's business so well that he can claim to rule over another through virtue of superior intellect (obviously, an idea murdered and buried by modern states). But, in that framework, it's also perfectly compatible with absolute monarchy, so long as something occupies the position of sovereign-but-not-master. Lewis, in that Anglo-Christian inheritance, can only agree that no man can be master based on contingent facts about the world, as you point out. A man, or artificial man, fit to be master cannot exist, because we are fallen and the science to create artificial men (including the body politic) is also fallen.

In the Christian context, one could perhaps also look at the ambiguous place of the word doulos, 'slave', in the New Testament.

On the one hand, consider a text like John 15:15, where Jesus says to his disciples, "I do not call you servants/slaves any longer... I have called you friends". Paul also often draws a distinction between slaves and freemen, perhaps most famously in the allegory of Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4. He says "you are no longer a slave, but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God" and "we are children, not of the slave, but of the free woman". It is summarised in Gal 5:1 - "For freedom Christ has set us free". Or we might return back to John for 8:36 - "if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed". So the Christian life is opposed to slavery, and involves a new and deeper freedom.

On the other hand, Paul often presents this, paradoxically, as liberty that leads to a new and voluntary kind of slavery. See e.g. Romans 6:18, "you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness". Or see Acts 16:17, where a seer girl cries out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God". Paul himself identifies as a slave (Rom 1:1 and Tit 1:1, "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ..."), and occasionally refers to his fellows like that (Col 4:12, "Epaphras, a slave of Christ Jesus, greets you"). A few others use the same language (James 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, Jude 1). There's even that interestingly cryptic verse 1 Cor 7:22 - "Whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ". Even Moses is referred to as a slave, in Revelation 15:3.

(Compare how sometimes Muslims have used the slogan "Jesus is the slave of Allah". This is a quotation from Muhammad, but it can come off as trolling or aggressive to modern Christians.)

Now some of this is just polysemy; translations sometimes render doulos as 'slave' and sometimes as 'servant', depending on context. However, I think much of it is a tension between two images. The same conviction seems to run through it all, where Christians are free of earthly corruption but engaged in loyal and devoted service to God through Christ, but whether that service is drawn in opposition to slavery or as a higher form of slavery (which we might often translate 'service' because the word 'slavery' has such negative connotations now) can vary.

Anyway, if you prefer the second image, and present Jesus or God as examples of men worthy to be masters, you might say that in that context slavery would be acceptable.

However, I think it's pretty clear that that kind of slavery would be radically qualitatively different to anything recognisable as earthly slavery, so it shouldn't really be evaluated in the same way. I also tend to think that John passage militates against it somewhat; Jesus calls us into his family, to be fellow children of God and joint heirs of the promise (Rom 8:17). So in the cultural context of today, I'm not sure that slavery language is a good way of communicating what Christians are called to. I might save it for the intermediate Bible studies, at least!

Good and interesting point.

It actually reminds me somewhat of the role of moderation in Socratic philosophy. The first precept of philosophy is moderation; the ability to make any progress in philosophy whatsover is contingent on the student's practice of moderation in respect to worldly things and appetites. However, it's not-very-Straussianly-hidden in Plato and particularly Xenophon that Socrates himself is wildly immoderate with respect to wisdom and to the love of the Good - that is, with respect to those things in which, pursued properly, there is no need for or value in moderation, because they are purely good. If the natural slave is one who cannot moderate his appetites, then one could read Socratic philosophy as recognizing that one is in a sense never entirely leaves that state, but becomes a slave of that to which it is appropriate for a man to be enslaved. Aristotle denies this because he's writing in the Politics, not the Metaphysics, and so is concerned with man as he contributes to the polis, but there are some hints of that elsewhere in Aristotle too, once we're no longer speaking of practical wisdom.

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