This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
aaaaah, conflating "Roko's Basilisk" with unfriendly AI in general? That makes more sense.
Well, it adds the important dimension of unfriendly AI being spiteful and making a friend-enemy distinction. Actually, let's just scratch the whole alignment part and say Conjecture or Anthropic announce that, should they build a God-like AI, they'll go after people who tried to get in their way and torture them, while rewarding allies with extra share of the light cone. If they were very close to success, this would've been straightforwardly persuasive.
But "Skynet, with a vengeance" isn't going to send anyone into existential despair. The dilemma is no different than weighing whether you should fight or surrender when faced with an invasion by another country.
More options
Context Copy link
Calling it spiteful is anthropomorphizing a bit too much. The more robustly you punish defection in all forms the more likely it is that other rational agents will cooperate with you. If "logical decision theory" is a strong enough attractor basin (which I doubt, but I suppose it's possible) then an "unaligned" AI may spontaneously cooperate with agents who made decisions that helped create it, defect against agents who did not help create it, and strongly defect against (punish) agents who made decisions that actively hindered it's creation.
Not anthropomorphizing at all. This is straight up spiteful behavior, irrational waste of resources. As I've explained, the Basilisk AI has no incentive to do good on the threat, and thus cannot credibly precommit to it. It certainly benefits from us being convinced, but it's easier to have people believe something than to prove it true. In short, this is pretty uncertain because AIs needn't be fully rational decision makers (and indeed, human-mimics will not be), but I don't buy that timeless/logical decision theory is some sort of big brain invention that minds converge to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link