Re: Collective Volition, next take

From: Russell Wallace (russell.wallace@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Jul 23 2005 - 13:18:59 MDT


On 7/23/05, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Human babies might have such simple minds that a purely individual
> extrapolation of their volition would end with a superbaby pooping a billion
> diapers per second. I, as I am right now, would not choose to take them from
> their mothers and consign them to that destiny.
>
> So you cannot presumptively ban "power over others" as a possible result of
> CEV, not unless you want to, on your personal authority and responsibility,
> wrench babies off what we conceive to be the track to humanity.

Of course not. I'm proposing no such thing.

> Russell proposed letting the AI programmers hardcode, for all future
> civilization until the end of time, a definition of adulthood. I don't think
> that's a very good solution.

Where the hell did you get that from? Not only did I not propose that,
I explicitly clarified that I was not proposing it.

> On the other hand, it's also clear that modern-day humans enjoy meddling in
> each other's lives a great deal, so that in a democracy it's easy to get a
> vote on banning offensive speech. Libertarians argue that banning offensive
> speech is wrong, and to this end, propose many arguments about both the actual
> consequences of banning offensive speech, the actual consequences of offensive
> speech, propositions about fair play in the realm of ideas, and inalienable
> rights and the value of personal freedom, and warnings about the undesirable
> personal consequences of allowing such a framework to exist. I think each of
> these arguments is correct, in the sense that I would still so believe even if
> I knew more and thought faster. If this is not true of other humans, being
> the people that they are - if, being smarter, they would yet prefer to censor
> and be censored by the force majeure of superintelligence, nor allow that any
> enterable realm of freedom should exist - then I'm not sure in what sense
> freedom of speech could be said to be what humanity wants. At that point I'd
> end up in a genuine moral dilemma, or rather the Last Judge would, that I
> still haven't thought of any morally acceptable way to resolve. I do know
> that it would not be morally acceptable to me, to, on my own authority, impose
> freedoms on those who would *never* wish them.

I agree completely. That's why I propose that there be a domain where
a given freedom is allowed, and a domain where it is not, and that
people have the choice of which they want to emigrate to.

- Russell7



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