but I think it’s important to realize that the overwhelming majority of people care a lot about whether a justice system is fair in addition to whether it is harm-reducing, and that this is the actual motivation for the laws I discuss above, even if you can technically propose a defense of them in harm-reduction terms.
I take the same stance towards moral arguments as I do towards epistemic ones. I would be very sad if EAs make moral arguments that are based on bad moral reasoning just because they appeal to the preconceived notions of some parts of society. I think most arguments in favor of naive conceptions of fairness fall into this category, and I would strongly prefer to advocate for moral stances that we feel confident in, have checked their consistency and feel comfortable defending on our own grounds.
Hmm. I think I’m thinking of concern for justice-system outcomes as a values difference rather than a reasoning error, and so treating it as legitimate feels appropriate in the same way it feels appropriate to say ‘an AI with poorly specified goals could wirehead everyone, which is an example of optimizing for one thing we wanted at the expense of other things we wanted’ even though I don’t actually feel that confident that my preferences against wireheading everyone are principled and consistent.
I agree that most peoples’ conceptions of fairness are inconsistent, but that’s only because most peoples’ values are inconsistent in general; I don’t think it means they’d necessarily have my values if they thought about it more. I also think that ‘the U.S. government should impose the same prison sentence for the same crime regardless of the race of the defendant’ is probably correct under my value system, which probably influences me towards thinking that other people who value it would still value it if they were less confused.
Some instrumental merits of imposing the same prison sentence for the same crime regardless of the race of the defendant:
I want to gesture at something in the direction of pluralism: we agree to treat all religions the same, not because they are of equal social value or because we think they are equally correct, but because this is social technology to prevent constantly warring over whose religion is correct/of the most social value. I bet some religious beliefs predict less recidivism, but I prefer not using religion to determine sentencing because I think there are a lot of practical benefits to the pluralistic compromise the U.S. uses here. This generalizes to race.
There are ways you can greatly exacerbate an initially fairly small difference by updating on it in ways that are all technically correct. I think the classic example is a career path with lots of promotions, where one thing people are optimizing for at each level is the odds of being promoted at the next level; this will result in a very small difference in average ability producing a huge difference in odds of reaching the highest level. I think it is good for systems like the U.S. justice system to try to adopt procedures that avoid this, where this is sane and the tradeoffs relatively small.
(least important): Justice systems run on social trust. If they use processes which undermine social trust, even if they do this because the public is objectively unreasonable, they will work less well; people will be less likely to report crimes, cooperate with police, testify, serve on juries, make truthful decisions on juries, etc. I know that when crimes are committed against me, I weigh whether I expect the justice system to behave according to my values when deciding whether to report the crimes. If this is common, there’s reason for justice systems to use processes that people consider aligned. If we want to change what people value, we should use instruments for this other than the justice system.
I take the same stance towards moral arguments as I do towards epistemic ones. I would be very sad if EAs make moral arguments that are based on bad moral reasoning just because they appeal to the preconceived notions of some parts of society. I think most arguments in favor of naive conceptions of fairness fall into this category, and I would strongly prefer to advocate for moral stances that we feel confident in, have checked their consistency and feel comfortable defending on our own grounds.
Hmm. I think I’m thinking of concern for justice-system outcomes as a values difference rather than a reasoning error, and so treating it as legitimate feels appropriate in the same way it feels appropriate to say ‘an AI with poorly specified goals could wirehead everyone, which is an example of optimizing for one thing we wanted at the expense of other things we wanted’ even though I don’t actually feel that confident that my preferences against wireheading everyone are principled and consistent.
I agree that most peoples’ conceptions of fairness are inconsistent, but that’s only because most peoples’ values are inconsistent in general; I don’t think it means they’d necessarily have my values if they thought about it more. I also think that ‘the U.S. government should impose the same prison sentence for the same crime regardless of the race of the defendant’ is probably correct under my value system, which probably influences me towards thinking that other people who value it would still value it if they were less confused.
Some instrumental merits of imposing the same prison sentence for the same crime regardless of the race of the defendant:
I want to gesture at something in the direction of pluralism: we agree to treat all religions the same, not because they are of equal social value or because we think they are equally correct, but because this is social technology to prevent constantly warring over whose religion is correct/of the most social value. I bet some religious beliefs predict less recidivism, but I prefer not using religion to determine sentencing because I think there are a lot of practical benefits to the pluralistic compromise the U.S. uses here. This generalizes to race.
There are ways you can greatly exacerbate an initially fairly small difference by updating on it in ways that are all technically correct. I think the classic example is a career path with lots of promotions, where one thing people are optimizing for at each level is the odds of being promoted at the next level; this will result in a very small difference in average ability producing a huge difference in odds of reaching the highest level. I think it is good for systems like the U.S. justice system to try to adopt procedures that avoid this, where this is sane and the tradeoffs relatively small.
(least important): Justice systems run on social trust. If they use processes which undermine social trust, even if they do this because the public is objectively unreasonable, they will work less well; people will be less likely to report crimes, cooperate with police, testify, serve on juries, make truthful decisions on juries, etc. I know that when crimes are committed against me, I weigh whether I expect the justice system to behave according to my values when deciding whether to report the crimes. If this is common, there’s reason for justice systems to use processes that people consider aligned. If we want to change what people value, we should use instruments for this other than the justice system.