> Here's the thing: our current prevailing political philosophy of human rights and constitutional democracy is invalidated if we have mind uploading/replication or super-human intelligence.
Don't agree with this specific point. One of the most common anti-democratic arguments (?) is that people are inherently unequal, because of differences in physical and cognitive capacity. But this of course misses that declaration of all people being equal is performative. I don't think we actually care if it's "naturally" true, we - citizens - don't want to be dominated, so we will make everyone equal by law and politics. Democratic politics is just arguing the specifics, in what areas, to what extent etc.
So this is a rational pact. Trying to break it just means there will be someone stronger than you out to dominate you, and you'll be in a suboptimal position to resist, because you alienated and weakened your potential allies. Look up Republicanism for a related line of thinking.
In my opinion an artificial person automatically gets all the rights (they are bound to personhood and reciprocity and not biology). But I have no doubt there will be much lawlessness about this and perhaps an American Civil War-like event down the line.
There will at least have to be a law restricting the duplication or creation of persons; otherwise the dictator only needs to copy themselves >N times where world population is N and vote themselves into the top leadership position(s). It would be a race to the bottom cloning people, consuming all available compute resources, just to maintain status quo of political power. And it will be the wealthy/powerful who can afford the resources for mass self-duplication.
And then the question of personhood itself; someone is going to try uplifting animals (or raw creation of new beings) and we'll need a rigorous threshold for the properties an intelligence must have for personhood, and this is also vulnerable to the mass-cloning takeover of democracy because the simplest artificial person is likely much less resource intensive than a human, so they will quickly outnumber everyone else and who knows what their values would be in a democracy?
> someone is going to try uplifting animals (or raw creation of new beings) and we'll need a rigorous threshold for the properties an intelligence must have for personhood
The same question can be posed right now for humans that fell below the threshold due to brain damage or other conditions and display less self-awareness than extant, non-uplifted animals. Yet these humans in vegetative state do have personhood rights, they are not the property of someone else, it's illegal to steal their body parts, can't be terminated, etc. whereas the same cannot be said of many animals.
We currently don't have a threshold, not even a fuzzy one, it's completely arbitrary and based on being human or not. De-extinction of Neanderthal could also cause the same conundrum.
Well, democracy isn't only numerical advantage, it's also debating procedure and electoral system. If you just duplicate yourself, I think there are many questions about whether you really want it and your identity before just using it for political takeovers.
Historically an argument for narrow suffrage (e.g. only for landholders) was that economically dependent people are also politically dependent on magnates. These limitations did exist, though of course they're very corrosive to non-political rights as well. One can also try to make people economically independent, like it was done in ancient Athens by paying you to participate in the assembly and courts. I'm not arguing for anything in particular, just pointing out that it's a class of problems that had already existed in discourse in some way.
but this premise has an analogue - by out-breeding the "undesirables", you can obtain "democratic" power over another group. It is the argument that is used to take children away from parents of various indigenous races and "diluting" their race, or as an argument against immigrants ("they will out-breed us and then out vote us, if we let them in!").
I don't buy that a sybil attack is a real threat, as long as duplication procedure is also available to others, not just a select few. But if such a procedure is only available to a select few, it implies that they already have power, and so such a sybil attack doesn't seem like it's worth it, but instead would just use that power directly!
The obvious solution is to make cloning split the weight of the vote. People at year 0 are equal, cloning yourself (or even having kids) you split your votes and when you die your descendants inherit your share.
This kind of approach favors the weirdos who want to live forever, never reproduce, and be king of the whole universe. They only have to wait log_R(N) generations where R is the average reproduction rate and N is the current number of people.
I think the only realistic solution is maximizing average expected utility (which still has some weird edge-cases like utility monster) or maximizing the minimum expected utility of any person (drag everyone up to some minimum goodness, once they exist), which doesn't get humanity as much overall utility in the long run but avoids so many bad edge-cases that it may be worth it.
> They only have to wait log_R(N) generations where R is the average reproduction rate and N is the current number of people.
I don't think so? The wannabe dictator only gets voting power from his dying ancestors, they can never get more voting power than all their ancestors had together, no matter how much they wait. And even that edge case would only happen if all their ancestors died and had no other living descendants.
Thanks, good point; But a 7.7B^-1 share of the universe is still an incredible amount of power in the long run, and I think serves as a bit of a perverse incentive. Similar to trying to hold Bitcoin for decades.
> It would be a race to the bottom cloning people, consuming all available compute resources, just to maintain status quo of political power.
At least natural humans are rate-limited by gestation periods, but this isn't that far off from how some religious groups view their role in the world.
That brings up a big point of contention in some circles, for instance see the recent change in wording in the official DNC party platform[1] from Racial Equality (treating people the same regardless of race) to Racial Equity (ensuring equal outcomes amongst races through government policy).
It's an interesting point you brought here. Would you like to have some async anon text chat about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the geopolitical context and how it affects the tech world? (over Telegram/PGP for example). I cannot witness that level [1] of anti-curiosity from downvoters.
It's not surprising, that's a pretty common caricature used to paint disability acts. The base root of what you're remembering is probably a short story by Kurt Vonnegut - "Harrison Bergeron"[1] which talks about an extremist approach to something beyond equality - sameness, everyone is forced to be the same. Equality and sameness are not the same, people can be treated equally and yet still allowed to retain their independence and diversity.
That’s a grossly capitalist exploitative viewpoint which overlooks hidden power structures to excuse any degree of inequality. Any difference whatsoever between anybody can be traced back to hidden power structures, and to deny this is fascism and morally equivalent to the January 6 toppling of our democracy and also slavery, which founded our nation in 1619.
It’s time for a discussion of alternatives to the engine of inequality called capitalism. You see, when I buy something from you, we are both exploited in ways we know not, because they are hidden.
No, you are presenting a non-sequitur, I am bringing up the fact that the government imposes requirements for businesses and government to make accommodations for the disabled. This is in fact to provide equity via governmental means. This occurs at a cost to the organization providing the service. You are arguing about an extreme where everyone is flattened (via cleaving or dystopian sci-fi), which does not happen under the ADA. I actually never indicated support for that position (or any position in fact) you are essentially straw manning.
My point is that the government in fact does this via legislation (the ADA), are you willing to argue against it to remain consistent?
I was attempting to show that we both read the same comment by JasonFruit and interpreted the phrase "not attempt to make them equal by government-enforced handicapping" very differently.
The base claim was that after reading JasonFruit's comment with the interpretation I had, your own comment seemed like a tangent.
Now, which of us interpreted his comment correctly? I have no idea.
Neither was I attempting to pass comment on the badness/goodness of ADA.
Yeah, that's what I meant when I mentioned arguing the specifics. I agree that there are egalitarian extremisms that are pretty dystopic, though I think practice shows that only equality before law doesn't mean much by itself.
If you ask me specifically, the extent is that everyone should have equal active participation in government and suffer no overwhelming pressure, physical, economic or otherwise from other people. Equality so that we can be free. This is more that we tend to have, but not necessarily in the "socialist" direction I think.
To tie it back from an offtopic, this would make many AGI applications uneconomic, though likewise many enterprises are uneconomic if you have to pay your labor. Perhaps free societies, wherever they would be, would have the advantage of having free artificial minds acting in their actual self-interest, and not just serving their masters. You can see similar dynamic in late-18th century revolutionary wars.
Full AGI is likely uneconomic anyway. I think the sweet spot is going to be right below wherever we ultimately draw the "gets to have rights" line.
There would still be good reasons to do AGI, and free artificial minds would be able to contribute greatly to society. But sufficient AI alignment to make existing systems comfortable with this is fundamentally counter to AI rights.
> we - citizens - don't want to be dominated, so we will make everyone equal by law and politics.
History[0] makes a mockery of your assumption. What you says makes idealistic sense, but what tends to happen empirically is that people end up with tribal behavior which results in people not fighting for equality for everyone - but just for their in-group[1] (see: American "founding fathers", as alluded to in/lampshaded by TFA).
edits:
Also - "citizen power" may end up being a footnote of history, as the period sandwiched by monarchs and megacorps
0. The present too, but history has more examples.
1. Also with a dash of fundamental attribution error: anyone infringing my rights is a tyrant, but my infringing on other's rights is necessary for the greater good and/or not an infringement, really
In the West, this has already occured at least once
>Also - "citizen power" may end up being a footnote of history, as the period sandwiched by monarchs and megacorps
The Athenian-led democratic city-states had their Golden Age between Solon (who kicked out the Tyrants and instituted democracy) and the Peloponnesian Wars (where Athens was forced to accept the Thirty Tyrants - which was dethroned after less than a year, but after that there was no more a Shining Light of democracy as examples for local democrats to kick out the tyrants and oligarchs with) then the Macedonian period, with all the kings.
Well, at least the Romans that replaced them had a senate?
> Well, at least the Romans that replaced them had a senate?
Not a scholar of the period, but I was under the impression that Greece's democratic system meant that only male land-owners could vote and that the leading philosophers of the day considered slavery the natural order of things, women marginally (if at all) better than slaves, and boys suitable for divine pleasure. It doesn't seem particularly democratic for them?
I do think it's reasonable to see in ancient Greece the seeds for democracy, but modern republican and democratic forms are pretty far removed from those days; and I don't suppose most of us would be very pleased to live under such a system.
> Not a scholar of the period, but I was under the impression that Greece's democratic system meant that only male land-owners could vote and that the leading philosophers of the day considered slavery the natural order of things, women marginally (if at all) better than slaves, and boys suitable for divine pleasure. It doesn't seem particularly democratic for them?
Except for the thing about boys and divine pleasure that just about sounds like the founding of the United States to me.
> Except for the thing about boys and divine pleasure that just about sounds like the founding of the United States to me.
That's probably not exactly true, but obviously universal-er suffrage has been a very long and fraught road. And it's undoubtedly very complex.
I would offer that the social and political norms of the early modern period do stand in contrast to those of Greece despite their obvious resemblance. As you point out at the founding of the US, the franchise was restricted (States were given the power to determine the franchise), and it wasn't until the early 20th century in the UK that land ownership rules were dropped (creating universal suffrage for males 21 and over).
At the same time, the social norms concerning marriage, pederasty, and slavery were also different. The religious background and perspective were utterly different. It is hard to imagine modern forms of representative democracy arising in Ancient Greece absent an intervention.
> declaration of all people being equal is performative
The Declaration of Independence states that it is self-evident. This seems to preclude the possibility of it being performative, without some significant mental gymnastics.
It is self-evident because it is a moral proposition. It is the same as saying stealing your friend's cherished pet is wrong. It is obvious and needs no more explanation.
I'm pretty sure that the "all men" in that document wasn't literally "all men" (even, never mind all people) either, so perhaps we wouldn't consider it the last word on the subject.
The truth of the statements is presupposed (“these truths”). It’s only the self-evidence of their truth that’s asserted. There’s no component of the statement that’s performative in Austin’s sense (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance). For example, a statement of the form “A holds B to be C” is clearly truth evaluable, and so doesn’t qualify as performative.
I think it's even more constrained than that. I think that the principle is more like:
A government, to effectively regulate the behavior of individuals as part of a group, must not privilege any member of the group over another.
Or something like that. I'm no Jefferson... the key point is that the equality that a nation cares about is the equality of all asmembers of that nation. All subject to equal rights, taxation, representation, punishment, etc., as we can best define it.
Yes, equality is subjective and as such has to be performative. It is ridiculous to argue about equality on an objective basis. There is no measure where we are all can be objectively equal (intelligence, strength, agility, musical/artistic ability etc.). Equality is a political construct where we are equal under the law. It is axiomatic thus self-evident. There is nothing to justify.
Don't agree with this specific point. One of the most common anti-democratic arguments (?) is that people are inherently unequal, because of differences in physical and cognitive capacity. But this of course misses that declaration of all people being equal is performative. I don't think we actually care if it's "naturally" true, we - citizens - don't want to be dominated, so we will make everyone equal by law and politics. Democratic politics is just arguing the specifics, in what areas, to what extent etc.
So this is a rational pact. Trying to break it just means there will be someone stronger than you out to dominate you, and you'll be in a suboptimal position to resist, because you alienated and weakened your potential allies. Look up Republicanism for a related line of thinking.
In my opinion an artificial person automatically gets all the rights (they are bound to personhood and reciprocity and not biology). But I have no doubt there will be much lawlessness about this and perhaps an American Civil War-like event down the line.