Executive summary: The essay discusses concerns that the AI alignment discourse aspires to exert inappropriate control over future values, arguing this is not necessarily the case even without an objective “Tao” to guide choices.
Key points:
Lewis argues influencing future generations’ values without believing in an objective morality makes one a “tyrant”, but the essay disputes this, arguing influence can be ethical under moral anti-realism.
The essay claims naturalists can have rich values and relationships despite viewing values as fully natural, countering Lewis’s association of naturalism with instrumentalism.
Even without an objective Tao, the essay argues it’s possible to influence others’ values non-tyrannically by respecting consent, freedom to not participate, ethical norms against coercion, etc.
Letting non-agential Nature determine all future values is not obviously ethically superior to intentional steering grounded in human values. We are part of Nature too.
The essay concludes shaping future values requires wisdom, cooperativeness, respect for boundaries and learning from yin, not just rejecting Nature as valueless.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The essay discusses concerns that the AI alignment discourse aspires to exert inappropriate control over future values, arguing this is not necessarily the case even without an objective “Tao” to guide choices.
Key points:
Lewis argues influencing future generations’ values without believing in an objective morality makes one a “tyrant”, but the essay disputes this, arguing influence can be ethical under moral anti-realism.
The essay claims naturalists can have rich values and relationships despite viewing values as fully natural, countering Lewis’s association of naturalism with instrumentalism.
Even without an objective Tao, the essay argues it’s possible to influence others’ values non-tyrannically by respecting consent, freedom to not participate, ethical norms against coercion, etc.
Letting non-agential Nature determine all future values is not obviously ethically superior to intentional steering grounded in human values. We are part of Nature too.
The essay concludes shaping future values requires wisdom, cooperativeness, respect for boundaries and learning from yin, not just rejecting Nature as valueless.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.