Superforecaster, former philosophy PhD, Giving What We Can member since 2012. Currently trying to get into AI governance.
David Mathersđ¸
Karma: 6,127
This is one personâs bad decision at one org as far as I can tell, that the vast majority of EAs seem to disagree with. Donât think we should be doing too much self-criticism over it.
Speaking as someone who strongly disagreed with you inviting him to Manifest, Hanania has certainly improved a lot in my view, though I also agree he still says pretty bad/âbigoted stuff from time to time, though I canât think of an example off the top of my head. I do still think he is fairly intensely elitist, and disaprove of that, but I donât think that meets the bar for shunning on its own.
If I try to do the sorites reasoning from say, a 5 ft man isnât tall and âif a n foot man isnât tall, the neither is an n ft + 0.0000000000000000001 manâ to a 7 ft man is not tallâ where does this go wrong in your viewâ?
Let me put my argument another way, without mention of truth, since I think getting into theories of truth is kind of overcomplicating things.
You want to use some kind of no sharp cut-offs claim to do work for you, in ruling out certain moral theories. But very normal reasoning from no sharp cut-off claims like your âgive 2 systemsâ etc, plus claims we definitely want to accept like â0 grains is not a heapâ or âa non-conscious non-living, mindless object isnât a moral patientâ leads to conclusions we definitely donât want to accept. This is fairly strong evidence we shouldnât use no sharp cut-off claims to draw substantive conclusions (or at least not unless we can distinguish the way were using them from the bad way of using them that leads to drawing absurd conclusions.)
Which part(s) of this do you think are wrong?
One way to describe this idea is: Under capitalism workers do better than under socialism, but also under capitalism capitalists do better than workers, so once AIs can be workers, why not keep capitalism, but make everyone a capitalist. This does bring out some of the risks to the well-being of the AIs themselves.
âI do not think a statement like âVasco is tallâ is true or falseâ
Why not?
âgiven 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0You disagree?â
I think itâs unclear exactly what the right thing to say here is, because the sorites paradox is hard to resolve, but yes, probably I disagree. This is the specific to âhas moral valueâ version of the second premise in the standard way of running the sorites paradox. The standard way of running the sorites, with the toy example of âheapâ is:
A. 1 grain of sand is not a heap of sand.
B: For any number n, if n grains donât make a heap, then n+1 grains donât make a heap.
Conclusion, 1 million grains of sand donât make a heap.
Itâs unclear exactly what the âmoral valueâ version is, unless we pin down what having moral value varies with, but if we say it varies with whether something is a living organism, we can run a version that goes something like:
D) At time t, where t is a time where itâs dead, Bob the horse does not have moral value.
E) If Bob lacks more value at time t, he also lacks moral value at time t minus 1 planck time.
Conclusion: Bob the horse never had moral value.
In the case of the original argument with grains of and, A is absolutely definitely correct, and we definitely want to reject the conclusion, so we have to reject either B or the validity of the argument from A and B to the conclusion. But going from A and B to the conclusion is just modus ponens, and also looks like mathematical proof by induction. So it seems like we have to reject B. Famously rejecting B at least seems to commit you to there being âsharp cut-offsâ, for example, an exact number of grains that make a heap, an exact answer about where the boundaries of Mount Everest are etc. This is very counter-intuitive, but since B is false, either the âno sharp cut-offsâ intuition must just be wrong, or there must be a way of making it compatible with rejecting generalisations like B after all.
âgiven 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0âł looks like exactly the sort of no sharp cut-offs-adjacent generalisation that thinking about the sorites shows must be wrong somehow.
https://ââplato.stanford.edu/ââentries/ââsorites-paradox/ââ This is worth reading on what philosophers have said about âno sharp cut-offâ principles like âgiven 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0âł
What does the phrase âcurrent definitions of being tallâ pick out exactly?
âThe point I wanted to make is that, given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0.â
This is the famous claim that vague predicates shouldnât have sharp cut-offs. Itâs been analyzed to death in philosophy, because it generates paradox, but I donât know of any way of rejecting it that implies that when you have a continuous underlying thing, and a concept that is vague, the concept must apply at least a little bit to every thing on the continuum. And indeed, as I said, I think moving from âthis way of distinguishing things from moral status from things without them would lead to an arbitrary cut where things go from zero to oneâ to âwe should reject itâ, will swiftly get you the view that everything or nothing has moral status if your not careful, because whatever apparently binary on/âoff thing, like being an organism that gets you onto the continuum that âmoral statusâ is meant to apply to, will turn out itself to look more like something that comes in degrees when you zoom in.
Also death is a process, with a blurry line, that I will eventually undergo, but Iâm not a little tiny bit dead if I have an incurable cancer but am currently fit and active.
Why think this though? Whatâs wrong with the view that itâs just false that a 5ft 1 man is tall?
It doesnât usually follow from a lack of sharp cut-off that something applies to everything. âTallâ lacks a sharp cut-off, but a 5 ft 1 inch tall man is not a little bit tall, heâs just not tall. I also doubt you can get rid of arbitrariness here, because if you zoom in far enough the line between organism and not will probably itself get blurry, at least for some possible organism-ish things that could exist or around the moment of death etc.
On the first point, maybe Iâm wrong then.
On the second, only if bacteria have preferences in a morally relevant sense. But yes, it probably does imply that animals and humans get the same moral weight if combined with strict preference utilitarianism. But itâs hard to see how else interpersonal utility comparison could be made-in my view, this is true of hedonistic utility comparisons too actually, although thatâs more controversial-so maybe the problem here is utilitarianism, not the rule.
I like the zero-one rule idea, but the last time I pushed it on here someone pointed out it might run into trouble with two people who have different trade offs between their worst possible and best possible experiences. I.e. if you would take a 51/â49 chance of best v worst possible experience, but someone else will only take the deal when the ratio is 80â20, applying the normalization idea possibly breaks. I donât have the mathematical sophistication to work out if this is right, but I suspect you do.
https://ââwww.socialeurope.eu/ââomnibus-to-nowhere-the-quiet-dismantling-of-european-governance
What do you think the important claims being made in this piece are, and what evidence do you think it is giving for them?
âwhere a massive European data centre build-out sacrifices regional standards â
Can you say a bit about what you have in mind here and why itâs important?
What current negative effects are you worried about? What measures do you want taken against them?
âbut it seems to me that all the cluelessness arguments against consequentialism also undermine other decision-making systems as well.â
This seems important. Why do you think that?
I find it somewhat hard to take âbut what if itâs good for third world children themselves to dieâ all that seriously as an objection. I think most anti-natalist philosophers would deny this. Isnât Benatarâs view that is bad for people to come into existence, but itâs often better for their lives to continue once they have started. In general anti-natalists are not usually utilitarians, classical or negative.
Wasnât Dario Amodei one of the earliest signers of the GWWC pledge? Long before Anthropic existed? That makes him quite atypical amongst very rich people right? Though for what itâs worth I would probably bet against him giving most of his wealth away, even if he has pledge to do that.
Iâm definitely not missing the second point, since I agree with it and its one of the reasons I think itâs a bad decision. But that doesnât mean theyâll be correct to see it as something âEAsâ are responsible for.
On the first point, I agree with Ariel, I donât really see how the community can have multiple self-governing orgs and also prevent any of them from making bad hires. I donât think Austin would have responded to external pressure on this. And Iâm not sure how much prior endorsement from big EA orgs Manifund had anyway.