I disagree with Ben. I think the usage that Mark is talking about is a reference to Death with Dignity. A central example of my usage is
it would be undignified if AI takes over because we didn’t really try off-policy probes; maybe they just work really well; someone should figure that out
It’s playful and unserious but “X would be undignified” roughly means “it would be an unfortunate error if we did X or let X happen” and is used in the context of AI doom and our ability to affect P(doom).
Death with Dignity is straightforwardly using the word dignity in line with its definition (and thus in line with the explanation I gave), so if you think that’s the usage Mark is referring to then you should agree with the position that dignity is a word that is being consistently used to mean “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect”.
The following quote from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince often runs through my mind, and matches up with what Eliezer is advising us to collectively do in that essay.
“It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew—and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents—that there was all the difference in the world.”
That essay is advising optimizing the log odds of survival when the odds of survival are 0%.
People at the end of their lives may have a do-not-resuscitate policy because they want the dignity of dying on their own terms and not leaving behind a mangled corpse and medical debt. But a DNR policy doesn’t maximize log odds of survival.
Other people may choose to be cryogenically frozen in a country with legal euthanasia, which maximizes log odds of survival. For them, that is a dignified choice. But it’s an unusual set of values and actions.
On LW I see people using the term in both the general way and the specific way. So I think you are both right.
I disagree with Ben. I think the usage that Mark is talking about is a reference to Death with Dignity. A central example of my usage is
It’s playful and unserious but “X would be undignified” roughly means “it would be an unfortunate error if we did X or let X happen” and is used in the context of AI doom and our ability to affect P(doom).
...?
Death with Dignity is straightforwardly using the word dignity in line with its definition (and thus in line with the explanation I gave), so if you think that’s the usage Mark is referring to then you should agree with the position that dignity is a word that is being consistently used to mean “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect”.
The following quote from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince often runs through my mind, and matches up with what Eliezer is advising us to collectively do in that essay.
That essay is advising optimizing the log odds of survival when the odds of survival are 0%.
People at the end of their lives may have a do-not-resuscitate policy because they want the dignity of dying on their own terms and not leaving behind a mangled corpse and medical debt. But a DNR policy doesn’t maximize log odds of survival.
Other people may choose to be cryogenically frozen in a country with legal euthanasia, which maximizes log odds of survival. For them, that is a dignified choice. But it’s an unusual set of values and actions.
On LW I see people using the term in both the general way and the specific way. So I think you are both right.