[extropy-chat] Extropy and libertarianism

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Personally, the part that turns me off is the attempt to insist that 
Extropianism *never was* libertarian.  I've made mistakes, and I've 
publicly repudiated them and gotten on with my life.  The difficulty 
would arise if I tried to insist that the Singularity Institute *never 
had* been in favor of just throwing together any AI system that worked 
without care for FAI.  Everyone is allowed to change.  No one can force 
you to go on believing what you believed five years ago.  But part of 
that is coming out and publicly admitting that, yes, an actual 
disruptive update has occurred in your beliefs.  If I refused to say, 
"By my present standards, Eliezer-1996 was a fool," if from pride I 
tried to avoid the appearance that my past self had made a mistake, then 
people would justly hold me to account for my past self's opinions.

Maybe I'm wrong, and it really is the case that ExI never was a 
libertarian organization.  But personally, I'd like to see ExI come out 
and say:  "We used to be a libertarian organization.  That was a mistake 
and we admit it.  From now on we're going to be a transhumanism 
organization that is not explicitly tied to any political viewpoint 
except where it infringes on transhumanist issues, although our 
philosophy of self-reliance and distaste for coercion is highly 
compatible with libertarianism as philosophy."  So far as I'm concerned, 
that would settle everything, and anyone who wanted to accuse the modern 
ExI of libertarianism would have to produce modern evidence.

If you want to stand on principle, strongly and forthrightly, you must 
forthrightly announce changes in your principles *as changes*. 
Otherwise you'll try to simultaneously satisfy your old principles and 
your new principles, and in the process water down everything you say. 
That's what happens when people try to say things that satisfy multiple 
principles simultaneously.

For the record:  I used to be a libertarian.  Now I am not a 
libertarian, but I'm readily recognizable as someone who's a heck of a 
lot closer to being a libertarian than to any other standard political 
position.  In other words, my opinions actually changed from one time to 
another.  Anyone who objects to my modern opinions can take it up with 
my modern self, and anyone who wants to argue with my past self is out 
of luck unless they invent a time machine.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence