[extropy-chat] Whoa! / Wafa Sultan

Samantha Atkins sjatkins at mac.com
Mon Jul 31 16:33:41 UTC 2006


On Jul 31, 2006, at 4:10 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:

>
> On 7/31/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
> I was not particularly impressed by, e.g., her unwillingness to  
> condemn
> the various mass murders of American Indians.
>
> I am curious with respect to your thoughts regarding (a) "mass  
> murders" vs. deaths due to encounters with bioagents the Indians  
> were relatively defenseless against [1]; (b) deaths due to human  
> caused habitat loss (say for chimpanzees); and (c) intentional  
> outright harvesting of what are presumably highly intelligent  
> (though "different") species such as whales during the whaling era.

With (a) there is no question of the amount of intelligence and it is  
our own species.  Neither (b) or (c) have this feature.

>
> Fundamentally however, what you are dealing with is cultural "my  
> tribe" vs. "your tribe" indoctrination (witness shiite v. sunni or  
> many examples I'm sure you could find in India).  This involves a  
> perspective that life is a zero sum game and may very well have an  
> underlying genetic basis (for aggression, violence, lack of fear of  
> negative consequences, etc.).  The only way a Friendly AI will  
> change this part of the world is by forcibly removing both (a) the  
> underlying the genetic basis; and (b) physical editing of the  
> neurons that keep the zero sum mindset in place.  Failing to do  
> this will allow the hatred and violence to continue until the  
> people who retain such perspectives destroy one another.


Using force to do either or both of these things is an improvement?   
I am not convinced.   If the purported AI is going to rewrite us "for  
our own good" then why would it want to start with such limitations  
as humans embody?  We have all kinds of "genetic basis" for a number  
of things we learn more or less to control.   Neither all hatred or  
all violence is a priori wrong.  Being stupid, now that is something  
I would like to see a generally available cure for.

- samantha

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