Ems are humans, just running on different hardware. They want what humans want. They are stopped from wireheading themselves the same way humans are stopped from getting addicted to drugs. Namely, most of them don’t want to be wireheads.
When you start to simulate having sex to an EM I think you are very fast near wireheading.
Possibly, but note that there are humans that have a lot of available opportunities to have sex, yet prefer to do other things. If a simulated human spent a lot of time having sex, and is given the opportunity to reduce his sex drive, he may want to do so.
(still, I think that wireheading does loom large as things-that-matter here)
Maybe there will be a rule that if someone is so wireheaded they are unable to answer a simple question within sufficient time limit, euthanasia is legal, and their hardware is given to the remaining ems. That could be a selection pressure against wireheading.
This could be solved by splitting oneself into two personalities, the larger one would get the pleasure, and the smaller one would be responsible to prevent euthanasia. But when the larger personality stops responding, the smaller one could kill them and take their resources. Or the smaller one could try to split to two parts...
Okay, at the end either there is a part that avoided wireheading, so at least that part participates in our reality, or no such part remains and then the whole system can be legally killed.
Another way out would be if 1% of people resisted wireheading for whatever reasons (religious, or program themselves to be unable to accept wireheading), and gradually would take over the world.
For me, “people” just means conscious beings. An AI or an alien could be a person, but they would be psychologically very different from a human, and asking what they want would be a very difficult question.
And? Psychopaths are alien enough for me to have at best minor compunctions about wholesale annihilation and they’re a lot closer to me than say, uplifted dogs on most dimensions. Them,I could see communion with. Absent a Singleton a subjective EM century will suffice for things to reach “Nuke them from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”
Psychopaths are alien enough for me to have at best minor compunctions about wholesale annihilation
You have at best minor compunctions about wholesale annihilation of an entire group of humans because you are too different to a psychopath? There’s some irony!
Note that this site has something of an official policy against discussion of hypothetical violence against identifiable people or groups. As far as I know there is no “except, you know, psychopaths, those @#%#s have it coming” exception in place. Incidentally of all the groups of actual humans one could discuss the wholesale annihilation of, psychopaths are among the least safe target to threaten in practical terms. Psychopaths will tend to have fewer compunctions when it comes to casual execution of pre-emptive self defence measures.
If I can play iterated prisoners dilemma with it and our terminal values are not at odds let’s trade. I have recent second hand exposure to one psychopath fucking a friend of mine over. It has left me with a much more visceral comprehension of the fact that some people are fucking evil than I had previously. And of conformity and victim blaming.
I’m going to retract the comment as ableist and because as you pointed out genocide is wrong.
A possibly rude question follows. Do you or have you had friendly relations with anyone you recognised was a psychopath? If so how, why?
A possibly rude question follows. Do you or have you had friendly relations with anyone you recognised was a psychopath? If so how, why?
A high functioning psychopath, sure. I blame people for what they in fact do, not which parts of their brain are active when they do so. My own visceral comprehension of human evil is such that I don’t see much tangible practical difference between high functioning instrumentally rational psychopaths and normal particularly high status humans. In fact since the main difference can be that the psychopath has had to become self aware of their own hypocrisy.
So your saying that values drift will make them less human as they age?
I suspect that either it wont, or it will make them so crazy that just leaving them is hardly an option. Hopefully, they’d develop some way to keep them sane.
What’s sane? That’s socially constructed. What’s good at reproducing, at getting more resources? That is not. Absent some mechanism to keep values from drifting ems will experience massive, swift value drift. This will be the case even if they stay within the space of current human neurological diversity, which they won’t.
The only way the future isn’t a hardscrabble hell is with a friendly Singleton.
I’d say absent some mechanism to keep them sane, an old enough EM couldn’t even be considered intelligent, and would only be a danger to the rest of us in that it’s a resource drain if we can’t stomach euthanasia.
We may or may not naturally have such a mechanism.
By “current human neurological diversity” do you mean staying within what we now consider a sane human (in which case values drift will be limited to what a sane human would value), or do you mean that they’re not modding their mind?
My opinion is the same for if you mean that EMs are modding themselves, except for the part about that there might be a built-in mechanism for keeping them sane.
Ems are humans, just running on different hardware. They want what humans want. They are stopped from wireheading themselves the same way humans are stopped from getting addicted to drugs. Namely, most of them don’t want to be wireheads.
Having sex is a big drive for humans. I don’t see how an Em will do that. Humans are motivated by having physical experiences.
When you start to simulate having sex to an EM I think you are very fast near wireheading.
Humans seem mainly motivated to read TvTropes and play MMOs. :p
If we were talking about an AI, I’d say you have a point, but an EM was originally a human. Simulating normal human experiences would be expected.
Possibly, but note that there are humans that have a lot of available opportunities to have sex, yet prefer to do other things. If a simulated human spent a lot of time having sex, and is given the opportunity to reduce his sex drive, he may want to do so.
(still, I think that wireheading does loom large as things-that-matter here)
Sex is an obvious example of a physical experience but not the only one. Nearly all pleasureable experiences involve physical perception in some way.
Maybe there will be a rule that if someone is so wireheaded they are unable to answer a simple question within sufficient time limit, euthanasia is legal, and their hardware is given to the remaining ems. That could be a selection pressure against wireheading.
This could be solved by splitting oneself into two personalities, the larger one would get the pleasure, and the smaller one would be responsible to prevent euthanasia. But when the larger personality stops responding, the smaller one could kill them and take their resources. Or the smaller one could try to split to two parts...
Okay, at the end either there is a part that avoided wireheading, so at least that part participates in our reality, or no such part remains and then the whole system can be legally killed.
Another way out would be if 1% of people resisted wireheading for whatever reasons (religious, or program themselves to be unable to accept wireheading), and gradually would take over the world.
But what if you want to wirehead? Should those of us that like the idea be forever doomed to live a less-than-euphoric existence?
you don’t have to make a copy of yourself, just code the minimal narrow AI routine needed to answer questions.
(I suggest replacing “humans” with “people”—to me, the former means ‘biologically human’.)
For me, “people” just means conscious beings. An AI or an alien could be a person, but they would be psychologically very different from a human, and asking what they want would be a very difficult question.
And light is waves, just not in the ocean.
Seriously, the sentence “human running on different hardware” is meaningless, without a definition of a human.
Ems are psychologically human. If you ask how a human would act in situation X vs. how an em would act in situation X, the answer is the same.
And? Psychopaths are alien enough for me to have at best minor compunctions about wholesale annihilation and they’re a lot closer to me than say, uplifted dogs on most dimensions. Them,I could see communion with. Absent a Singleton a subjective EM century will suffice for things to reach “Nuke them from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”
You have at best minor compunctions about wholesale annihilation of an entire group of humans because you are too different to a psychopath? There’s some irony!
Note that this site has something of an official policy against discussion of hypothetical violence against identifiable people or groups. As far as I know there is no “except, you know, psychopaths, those @#%#s have it coming” exception in place. Incidentally of all the groups of actual humans one could discuss the wholesale annihilation of, psychopaths are among the least safe target to threaten in practical terms. Psychopaths will tend to have fewer compunctions when it comes to casual execution of pre-emptive self defence measures.
If I can play iterated prisoners dilemma with it and our terminal values are not at odds let’s trade. I have recent second hand exposure to one psychopath fucking a friend of mine over. It has left me with a much more visceral comprehension of the fact that some people are fucking evil than I had previously. And of conformity and victim blaming.
I’m going to retract the comment as ableist and because as you pointed out genocide is wrong.
A possibly rude question follows. Do you or have you had friendly relations with anyone you recognised was a psychopath? If so how, why?
A high functioning psychopath, sure. I blame people for what they in fact do, not which parts of their brain are active when they do so. My own visceral comprehension of human evil is such that I don’t see much tangible practical difference between high functioning instrumentally rational psychopaths and normal particularly high status humans. In fact since the main difference can be that the psychopath has had to become self aware of their own hypocrisy.
So your saying that values drift will make them less human as they age?
I suspect that either it wont, or it will make them so crazy that just leaving them is hardly an option. Hopefully, they’d develop some way to keep them sane.
What’s sane? That’s socially constructed. What’s good at reproducing, at getting more resources? That is not. Absent some mechanism to keep values from drifting ems will experience massive, swift value drift. This will be the case even if they stay within the space of current human neurological diversity, which they won’t.
The only way the future isn’t a hardscrabble hell is with a friendly Singleton.
I’d say absent some mechanism to keep them sane, an old enough EM couldn’t even be considered intelligent, and would only be a danger to the rest of us in that it’s a resource drain if we can’t stomach euthanasia.
We may or may not naturally have such a mechanism.
By “current human neurological diversity” do you mean staying within what we now consider a sane human (in which case values drift will be limited to what a sane human would value), or do you mean that they’re not modding their mind?
My opinion is the same for if you mean that EMs are modding themselves, except for the part about that there might be a built-in mechanism for keeping them sane.