Sellout (in the context of Epoch) would apply to someone e.g. concealing data or refraining from publishing a report in exchange for a proposed job in an existing AI company.
As for traitor, I think the only group here that can be betrayed is humanity as a whole, so as long as one believes they’re doing something good for humanity I don’t think it’d ever apply.
As for traitor, I think the only group here that can be betrayed is humanity as a whole, so as long as one believes they’re doing something good for humanity I don’t think it’d ever apply.
Hmm, that seems off to me? Unless you mean “severe disloyalty to some group isn’t Ultimately Bad, even though it can be instrumentally bad”. But to me it seems useful to have a concept of group betrayal, and to consider doing so to be generally bad, since I think group loyalty is often a useful norm that’s good for humanity as a whole.
Specifically, I think group-specific trust networks are instrumentally useful for cooperating to increase human welfare. For example, scientific research can’t be carried out effectively without some amount of trust among researchers, and between researchers and the public, etc. And you need some boundary for these groups that’s much smaller than all humanity to enable repeated interaction, mutual monitoring, and norm enforcement. When someone is severely disloyal to one of those groups they belong to, they undermine the mutual trust that enables future cooperation, which I’d guess is ultimately often bad for the world, since humanity as a whole depends for its welfare on countless such specialised (and overlapping) communities cooperating internally.
It’s not that I’m ignoring group loyalty, just that the word “traitor” seems so strong to me that I don’t think there’s any smaller group here that’s owed that much trust. I could imagine a close friend calling me that, but not a colleague. I could imagine a researcher saying I “betrayed” them if I steal and publish their results as my own after they consulted me, but that’s a much weaker word.
[Context: I come from a country where you’re labeled a traitor for having my anti-war political views, and I don’t feel such usage of this word has done much good for society here...]
Sellout (in the context of Epoch) would apply to someone e.g. concealing data or refraining from publishing a report in exchange for a proposed job in an existing AI company.
As for traitor, I think the only group here that can be betrayed is humanity as a whole, so as long as one believes they’re doing something good for humanity I don’t think it’d ever apply.
Hmm, that seems off to me? Unless you mean “severe disloyalty to some group isn’t Ultimately Bad, even though it can be instrumentally bad”. But to me it seems useful to have a concept of group betrayal, and to consider doing so to be generally bad, since I think group loyalty is often a useful norm that’s good for humanity as a whole.
Specifically, I think group-specific trust networks are instrumentally useful for cooperating to increase human welfare. For example, scientific research can’t be carried out effectively without some amount of trust among researchers, and between researchers and the public, etc. And you need some boundary for these groups that’s much smaller than all humanity to enable repeated interaction, mutual monitoring, and norm enforcement. When someone is severely disloyal to one of those groups they belong to, they undermine the mutual trust that enables future cooperation, which I’d guess is ultimately often bad for the world, since humanity as a whole depends for its welfare on countless such specialised (and overlapping) communities cooperating internally.
It’s not that I’m ignoring group loyalty, just that the word “traitor” seems so strong to me that I don’t think there’s any smaller group here that’s owed that much trust. I could imagine a close friend calling me that, but not a colleague. I could imagine a researcher saying I “betrayed” them if I steal and publish their results as my own after they consulted me, but that’s a much weaker word.
[Context: I come from a country where you’re labeled a traitor for having my anti-war political views, and I don’t feel such usage of this word has done much good for society here...]