I like Scott Alexander’s discussion of symmetric vs asymmetric weapons. Symmetric weapons lead to an unceasing battle, which as you said has at least become less directly violent, but whose outcomes are more or less a random walk. But asymmetric weapons pull ever so slightly toward, well, a weakly extrapolated volition of the players on both sides.
Brownian motion plus a small term looks just like Brownian motion until you look a long ways back and notice the unlikeliness of the trend. The arc of the moral universe is long, etc.
(Of course, in this century we very probably don’t have the luxury of a long arc...)
That’s a good point, but aside from not having the luxury of a long arc, I’m also worried about asymmetric weapons coming online soon that will work in favor of bad ideas instead of good ones, namely AI assisted persuasion and value lock-in. Basically, good ideas should keep their hosts uncertain and probably unwilling to lock in their own values and beliefs or use superintelligent AI to essentially hack other people’s minds, but people under the influence of bad ideas probably won’t have such compunctions.
ETA: Also, some of the existing weapons are already asymmetric in favor of bad ideas. Namely the more moral certainty you have, the more you’re willing to use social pressure / physical coercion to spread your views. This could partly explain why moral uncertainty is so rare.
I like Scott Alexander’s discussion of symmetric vs asymmetric weapons. Symmetric weapons lead to an unceasing battle, which as you said has at least become less directly violent, but whose outcomes are more or less a random walk. But asymmetric weapons pull ever so slightly toward, well, a weakly extrapolated volition of the players on both sides.
Brownian motion plus a small term looks just like Brownian motion until you look a long ways back and notice the unlikeliness of the trend. The arc of the moral universe is long, etc.
(Of course, in this century we very probably don’t have the luxury of a long arc...)
That’s a good point, but aside from not having the luxury of a long arc, I’m also worried about asymmetric weapons coming online soon that will work in favor of bad ideas instead of good ones, namely AI assisted persuasion and value lock-in. Basically, good ideas should keep their hosts uncertain and probably unwilling to lock in their own values and beliefs or use superintelligent AI to essentially hack other people’s minds, but people under the influence of bad ideas probably won’t have such compunctions.
ETA: Also, some of the existing weapons are already asymmetric in favor of bad ideas. Namely the more moral certainty you have, the more you’re willing to use social pressure / physical coercion to spread your views. This could partly explain why moral uncertainty is so rare.