From: mwaser@cox.net
Date: Thu Mar 13 2008 - 09:17:22 MDT
>> germs have goals: To reproduce.
I disagree. Germs do not have a goal to reproduce, they just do so. The distinction to determine if something is a goal or not is whether an entity will deliberately attempt another avenue towards the same goal if it's initial path is blocked. Germs do not doing this.
>> The germ analogy was really just to set up the scenario where you would easily dismiss the trivially important "lesser" species. It could have been the more common ants or bees, although ants/bees do belong to a colony/hive so imply a collection in their nature.
:-) I got that when I supplied my initial answer and appreciated it (in all sense of the word :-)
> explain "nasty".
Contrary to my declaration of friendliness
> Just because the larger power could have gone elsewhere does not mean that it was a profitable use of resources to do so.
In the short term it certainly is *NOT* a profitable use of resources to do so. The thing is that Friendliness says "(explicitly not including generic sub-goals like money, power, pleasure, religion, etc.)" and resources is a generic sub-goal like money (and should have been/I thought *was* in the list).
> It only takes deciding (as you have done) the lesser power is insignificant or lacks sufficient goals (which may be an failure to properly model the species) to allow genocide without breaching Friendliness.
No. The explicitly preventing generic sub-goals prevents this (but when this wasn't apparent to you, this is an excellent argument!)
> as above, we may have a problem detecting "intelligent action" from the other party.
I would rephrase this as "a problem detecting GOALS from the other party" and would say that if we honestly tried to detect the goals and couldn't, they really aren't effectively goals (as per the germs) because we should be able to *see* the multi-path exploration (and if we can't, it is an Intelligence problem, *not* a Friendliness problem and is more profitably dealt with as such)
> I agree that it is not as much an ethical issue to accidentally allow harm, but it would still be inexcusable to use ignorance to justify unfortunate behavior.
I agree. That is why my Friendliness declaration says that I must include unintentional acts of UnFriendliness in it if requested. That clearly gives me incentive to avoid such incidents because it will reduce my trustworthiness (i.e. he's Friendly but so stuipid that he's still dangerous -- so it's better *not* to do business with him if you can avoid it)
> I understand this does not per se invalidate the declaration of Friendly. I guess our inaction to save the less fortunate bacteria during our germ cleanup could be considered an UnFriendly action by a third party. In this case, our blundering ignorance could get us black-listed from the Friendly Society because we're just too ignorant.
It doesn't get us black-listed. We're are still Friendly. We're just recognizable as stupid which has it's own negative consequences (which is why we have an Omohundro drive to improve ourselves).
> In a sufficiently plentiful environment it might be acceptable to live and let live. Our appetite for resources in a zero-sum universe prohibit such a Utopian view.
Resources are a zero-sum put effectiveness of resource utilization is certainly *very* positive sum which means that "effective resources" are a *very* positive sum. This is *effectively*, the ultimate argument FOR Friendliness as opposed to AGAINST it. Friendliness is explicitly designed to prevent me from wasting resources in striving against the goals of others wherever it is possible to avoid such striving.
> The Haves in our world already have much/most of the resources. I would argue that they make a good case for claiming that with even more resources they might be able to do more to find/create energy that would allow the Have-Not to get some. ex: If I had 30 million dollars I could give to Richard Loosemore in 10M checks over the next three years, he claims to be able to deliver AGI. Do I believe I can purchase something that promises an ROI countless orders of magnitude in excess of my measely 30M investment, or am I merely making Loosemore 30M richer than he is now? Honestly, I wish I had the problem of deciding how to invest $30M. :)
As Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute think tank in Washington recently argued "Once you accept that climate change, population growth, spreading water shortages, rising food prices etcetera are threats to our security, it changes your whole way of thinking about how you use public resources."
Your is an argument that the have-nots resent and will not go along with because it is not in their own self-interest to do so. Why would they possibly want to be Friendly if Friendliness gave away their resources?
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