The use of violence in case of violations of the NPT treaty has been fairly limited and highly questionable in international law. And, in fact, calls for such violence are very much frowned upon because of fear they have a tendency to lead to full scale war.
No one has ever seriously suggested violence as a response to potential violation of the various other nuclear arms control treaties.
No one has ever seriously suggested running a risk of nuclear exchange to prevent a potential treaty violation. So, what Yudkowsky is suggesting is very different than how treaty violations are usually handled.
Given Yudkowsky’s view that the continued development of AI has an essentially 100% probability of killing all human beings, his view makes total sense—but he is explicitly advocating for violence up to and including acts of war. (His objections to individual violence mostly appear to relate to such violence being ineffective.)
How exactly do you come to “up to and including acts of war”? His writing here was concise due to it being TIME, which meant he probably couldn’t caveat things in the way that protects him against EAs/Rationalists picking apart his individual claims bit by bit. But from what I understand of Yudkowsky, he doesn’t seem to in spirit necessarily support an act of war here, largely I think for similar reasons as you mention below for individual violence, as the negative effects of this action may be larger than the positive and thus make it somewhat ineffective.
The use of violence in case of violations of the NPT treaty has been fairly limited and highly questionable in international law. And, in fact, calls for such violence are very much frowned upon because of fear they have a tendency to lead to full scale war.
No one has ever seriously suggested violence as a response to potential violation of the various other nuclear arms control treaties.
No one has ever seriously suggested running a risk of nuclear exchange to prevent a potential treaty violation. So, what Yudkowsky is suggesting is very different than how treaty violations are usually handled.
Given Yudkowsky’s view that the continued development of AI has an essentially 100% probability of killing all human beings, his view makes total sense—but he is explicitly advocating for violence up to and including acts of war. (His objections to individual violence mostly appear to relate to such violence being ineffective.)
How exactly do you come to “up to and including acts of war”? His writing here was concise due to it being TIME, which meant he probably couldn’t caveat things in the way that protects him against EAs/Rationalists picking apart his individual claims bit by bit. But from what I understand of Yudkowsky, he doesn’t seem to in spirit necessarily support an act of war here, largely I think for similar reasons as you mention below for individual violence, as the negative effects of this action may be larger than the positive and thus make it somewhat ineffective.