[extropy-chat] Cats, was I am a moral, intelligent being

[Keith Henson]

At 01:37 AM 6/7/2006 -0400, Michael Vassar wrote:
>Yes analogies are always suspect...
>And existance proofs really do always demonstrate possibility...
>So so long as the existance proof is valid and people really *can* want to 
>remain moral and become more intelligent the analogy is simply a waste of 
>our time.
>
>If you want to get serious, at the very least you have to make a serious 
>case that the robustness of human morality under carefully considered and 
>bias corrected self-modification has not been adequately demonstrated (or 
>that human morality is not robust under bias correction) and give us some 
>reason for seriously doubting it.  Succeed in that and you still won't 
>have prooved that Friendlyness is impossible, you will just be in a 
>position analogous to those who claimed that heavier than air flying 
>machines capable of lifting humans are impossible rather than that of 
>those who claim that NO object of any size or with any other 
>characteristics can fly.

I am sorry to say I don't understand the basis of your complaint against my 
post.

"The dire reality is that reproduction cannot be unlimited in a limited 
world--so we go *SNIP* to cat gonads.  This is good from the moral 
viewpoint of a substantial majority of humans."

(I should correct the above to a substantial fraction of western culture 
members.)

My point was that more intelligent AIs or upgraded humans may have a 
different view of what is moral as we have a different view of what is 
moral compared to cats.  If you upgraded a cat to human level intelligence 
would it think controlling the population of regular cats the way we do was 
moral?  (I have no idea.)

I certainly had no intent to prove Friendlyness impossible either.  I would 
be more inclined to attempt to prove it possible or even likely.  But I do 
think Friendly AIs will have to make some hard decisions if unmodified 
humans remain in the world--analogous to the decisions we make about cats 
and for the same reason.

I think you may be objecting to my word use.   The word "solved" (in 
quotes) was in the literary device sense i.e., for the story.  I make no 
claims at all about this being a solution for the real world outside the story.

Though it does have the flavor of what we do with cats . . . .

Keith Henson

PS.  If the list snippers clip it, we should move this to the extopy-chat 
list.  In preparation I will cc that list.

>>From: Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com>
>>Reply-To: sl4 at sl4.org
>>To: sl4 at sl4.org
>>Subject: Re: I am a moral, intelligent being (was Re: Two draft 
>>papers:  AI and existential risk; heuristics and biases)
>>Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:53:24 -0400
>>
>>At 09:46 AM 6/6/2006 -0700, robin wrote:
>>
>>snip
>>
>>>It blows my mind that any intelligent and relevantly-knowledgeable
>>>person would have failed to perform this thought experiment on
>>>themselves to validate, as proof-by-existence, that an intelligent
>>>being that both wants to become more intelligent *and* wants to
>>>remain kind and moral is possible.
>>
>>>Really bizarre and, as I said, starting to become offensive to me,
>>>because it seems to imply that my morality is fragile.
>>
>>Analogy is always suspect, but consider cats.  We treat them as morally 
>>as we can.
>>
>>The dire reality is that reproduction cannot be unlimited in a limited 
>>world--so we go *SNIP* to cat gonads.  This is good from the moral 
>>viewpoint of a substantial majority of humans.
>>
>>But I have my doubts about how the cats feel about it.  At least it is my 
>>observation that intact cats have more interesting personalities.
>>
>>I "solved" this problem in the fiction I have been writing by putting 
>>rules on the AIs that they would analyze as being such a good idea they 
>>would not want to do otherwise.  Namely, no reproduction inside uploaded 
>>simulations and no food production by the AIs outside the simulations.
>>
>>And the simulations were so attractive compared to the real world that 
>>the big problem was getting enough people to have children in the 
>>physical world to keep up a remnant population.
>>
>>(The AIs were constructed without the desire to reproduce and were only 
>>brought into existence by physical state humans.)
>>
>>Keith Henson
>