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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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I really don't see why it would be more convincing to an AI overlord whether or not I have hold some kind of non-hypocritical reason for why it should value human life while I don't value life of less sentient beings.

If a legitimate non-hypocritical reason exists, then perhaps we can just debug the AI enough until it can properly reason through and realize for itself why we deserve our privileged position in reality. If no such rationale exists, then I suppose we’ll have to resort to cruder approaches for AI alignment.

I’m just spitballing there. I’m not actually looking for ways to align AI, but rather to see if I can morally justify non-hypocritically to myself why I can eat animals. On a personal level, I feel better about AI taking over and screwing us over if I know that it’s just us finally losing the same realpolitik game that we’ve inflicted onto “lesser” beings for eons, than if it’s the AI making a monumental moral misjudgment.

Thanks for the fruitful discussion.