It would have helped if you had said why you think we have differnt definitions. I don’t think I am asserting anything unsual (as far as the wider world is concerned) when I say morality is principallly about regulating interactions between people so that one persons actions take the interests of affected parties into account. Since, to me, that is a truism, it is hard for me to guess why anyone would demur. Other LWers have defined morality as decision theory, as something that just guides their actions, without necessarily taking others into account. I think that is clearly wrong because it suggests that a highly effective serial killer is “good”, since they are maximising their own value. But now I am struggling to
guess something you could easily just tell me.
You stated that there was some way to determine the validity of our ethics—by which I meant the moral preferences humans hold, as distinct from whatever source may have given them to us, be tit prisoner’s dilemmas or the will of God—without recourse to those same ethical intuitions.
When challenged on this assertion, you stated that our preferences may be revealed as incoherent by logic; yet, as I pointed out, an agent’s preferences may be perfectly coherent without being anything we would regard as “right”.
So either there has been some misunderstanding, or … show us this mysterious method of determining the Rightness of something without recourse to our ethical intuitions.
When challenged on this assertion, you stated that our preferences may be revealed as incoherent by logic;
I stated:
By coherence, and by its ability to actually be morality,
emphasis added. Your counterexample was paperclipping, which you say is coherent. My response was:
and by its ability to actually be morality, which paperclipping isn’t.
So you still need an example of coherent morlaity that is somehow readically different from ours, showing
that coherent morality doens’t converge enought to be called objective (or at least EDIT: intersubjective).
So you still need an example of coherent morlaity that is somehow readically different from ours,
May I refer you to the Chanur series, by C.J. Cherryh? Depicted in that series are several alien species along with alien modes of thought and alien moralities.
Consider for a moment the Kif. The Kif are a race of carnivores; they lack the internal wiring to appreciate emotions (as you and I understand the term “emotion”) and eat their food live (the notion of eating dead carrion disgusts them, no matter whether it’s been cooked in the meantime). Their terminal value is to maximise a quantity that they refer to as sfik, which has the following properties, among others:
If you die, then your sfik instantly goes to negative infinity. Personal survival is of massive value to the Kif. (Survival of others, incidentally, is entirely ignored).
Succeeding in any task demonstrates high sfik, with more sfik for more difficult tasks (and more for making it look easy, as compared to narrowly winning).
Being able to hold onto something that someone else wants shows greater sfik than the person trying to take it. Conversely, taking something that someone else holds shows greater sfik than the person holding it.
Since every Kif will do his utmost to protect his own life, killing another being shows a lot of sfik. This is proportional to the sfik of the person being killed (any high-status Kif is also a high-value target).
Of course, a high-sfik Kif gets to that position by being very hard to kill. He may even attract followers, on the basis that he will protect his followers from everybody else (anyone killing one of his followers takes sfik from him in the act, and so he will strive to avoid that). Note that a Kif leader does not promise to protect his followers from himself, and indeed will often kill a follower who has not proved useful (either directly, or by sending him on a suicide mission (and killing him directly if he does not go)).
Since they do not share human emotions, they do not grasp the concept of ‘friendship’. The closest translation in their language is “temporary-ally-of-convenience”.
It’s a radically different form of morality; murder is not considered a crime in Kifish society; but it’s also coherent (though more complex than paperclipping). I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “it’s ability to actually be morality”, though; that looks like a circular definition to me.
I think I am with Peterdjones on this: I don’t see how this can be called morality—it’s certainly a set of values, sfik-seeking is certainly something that motivates Kifs, and which they prefer to do; but to call it “morality” in the sense that humans recognize the word is no better than calling it “lust” (though it contains no sex) or “love” (though it contains no element of caring for others).
That it’s in their brains and motivates them isn’t enough to call it “morality” meaningfully. For it to be called “morality” meaningfully it has to motivate them in roughly the same manner that human morality motivates humans. Baby-eaters and Superhappies were motivated by morality, even if they were vastly different moralities. I don’t see anything in the Kifs that could be called morality.
Well, I think one of the minimal elements required to identify something as morality, is that one tends to prefer other people to be moral, at least in general, at least when their immorality doesn’t help you directly.
Babyeaters wanted other people to eat babies, and superhappies wanted other people to..superhappy, but Kifs don’t seem to have any reason to encourage sfik-seeking in others.
Kif find sfik-seeking entities to be easier to predict, and therefore easier to control. Thus they prefer sfik-seeking behaviour in others, for purely practical reasons.
I’d certainly be more willing to assign that label to Clippy’s system than to Kifs’. Though perhaps Clippy is too well-adjusted—if its preferences are identical to its morality, instead of merely having its morality influence its preferences, that may still be slightly too different than the way morality motivates humans to be given that label.
I’d feel better calling Clippy’s clippyness “morality” if it occasionally made staples and then felt bad about it, or it atleast had a personal preference for yellow paperclips in its vicinity while allowing that paperclips of other colors are just as clippy.
I am not convinced that Kif morality is coherent. Looking at it game-theoretically:
There is a set of actions (A) that run a non-infinitessimal risk of infinite loss, ie anything that has a risk
of losing ones life.
There is a set of actions (B) that have a non-infintiessimal chance of finite gain.
There is set of inactions that (C) that maintain an equilibrium.
Game theoretically, a Kif should avoid A, and avoid B if it entails A to any. Because losses are infinite and gains
finite, it makes no sense to endanger ones life for any putative gain. (Because of the infinity in A, the relative
likelihoods of loss and gain don’t matter). Kif should either avoid each other, or adopt pacifism (both versions of C). (Kif in fact have much more motivation to be pacifistic than humans). Kif Pacifism if is clearly
not C J Cherryh’s intention.
The key to whole arguent is the “infinite”. Perhaps the “Infinite” is an exageration, or perhaps C J Cherryh is one of those
people who thinks infinity is a large finite number. The intended results would follow in that case. Infinity is game changing.
Except they don’t have eachothers’ sourcecode, so even inaction or pacifist policies incur non-infinitesimal risk of infinite loss. There is, in fact, no set of actions which does not incur such a risk, due to free rider effects and multiplayer PD and all this tragedy of the commons going on in there.
I don’t think the “infinite” poses quite as much of a problem as it first seems, though it does make things kind of complicated.
Except they don’t have eachothers’ sourcecode, so even inaction or pacifist policies incur non-infinitesimal risk of infinite loss.
I don’t see what sourcecode has to do with it. A Kif can (perhaps only) minimise the risk of infintite loss by keeping interaction to an absolute minimum, preferably zero. That is not mere “inaction”in the sense of standing quietly in a elevator full of other Kif. That is “Another Kif....RUN!!!”
Except they don’t have eachothers’ sourcecode, so even inaction or pacifist policies incur non-infinitesimal risk of infinite loss.
I don’t see what free riding has to do with it either.
Running from other Kifs also (but less obviously) increases risk of -inf sfik. Cooperating or living socially with other kifs vastly increases your chances of survival in the wild, I presume. You run into a risk equilibrium problem (which can be reduced to raw math if you have enough data about the world and precise sfik values for Kif life and thing-ownership, though it does become very complicated maths (i.e. far more complex than I can solve) due to instrumental value effects and relational comparisons of -inf sfik risks) pretty quickly, but it does seem analytically solvable.
So Kifs have strong incentive to work together in some manner in order to avoid the high risks of death when going at it alone in the wilds, but also various recursive functions that compute sfik with some instrumental -inf sfik parameters plugging into the +fin sfik actions. Since this is apparently the case for most Kifs working together, but you have no guarantee that all Kifs can reliably precommit to cooperation (which is where source code factors in—if you could read the source code, you could see which ones can reliably precommit and under what conditions and how to enforce this), so there’s also some incentive to freeride on the Kif cooperation wave and gain a few sfiks by killing some other kifs and taking some of their things, so long as your ability to do so and the marginal gains from this (as well as the weighted instrumental parameter of -inf sfik risk reduction) outweigh the increase in -inf sfik that your higher status incur.
As an intuitive guess, Kifs are extremely cautious socially, but on average power structures and hierarchies of exponential rarity still form, as every Kif is aware that other Kifs have incentive to freeride and this means a risk that they get killed in the process of this free riding.
Running from other Kifs also (but less obviously) increases risk of -inf sfik. Cooperating or living socially with other kifs vastly increases your chances of survival in the wild, I presume.
Vastly is infinitely less than infinity.
living socially
They don’t exactly sound like social animals to me. The ideas that Kifs need to associate with other Kifs, but risk infinitley
negative disutulity from doing are not obviously compatible, to put it mildly. They are cat-like solitary predators writ large.
Running from other Kifs also (but less obviously) increases risk of -inf sfik. Cooperating or living socially with other kifs vastly increases your chances of survival in the wild, I presume.
Vastly is infinitely less than infinity.
This isn’t what the math says. The math says:
Go alone: 35% chance of -inf sfik within the next year.
Cooperate with other Kifs: X% chance of -inf sfik within the next year, with X being a function of the number of Kifs in the group and the chance of freeriders and the chance of being selected and so on.
So clearly for some situations and some numbers, i.e. for some functions, cooperating is superior to soloing.
Hyperbolic discounting heuristics, i.e. not valuing the state and utility of their distant future selves as much as their immediate self, perhaps in some manner which implements an asymptotic returns system for sufficiently distant selves, I would wager.
Granted, that’s just the easiest explanation that comes to mind. You’re correct that since this isn’t stated (AFAIK?) it’s a curious issue.
The key to whole arguent is the “infinite”. Perhaps the “Infinite” is an exageration,
“Infinite” was probably an exaggeration on my part. Individual Kif certainly do all that they can to avoid death, don’t care much about their legacy, and are very surprised to find that other races have the strange concept of a ‘martyr’ - that sfik can count after death.
I have sometimes talked in terms of objective morality, because it seems truer than subjective morality. But morality
is not really objective because it will vary with biology, and is of no use to sticks or stones. It is truer still to say that it is intersubjective. Humans are not going to adopt Kif morality because humans are not Kif.
My first thought on reading this is that a group of Kifish with human morality would eventually rule the world, if not actually wipe out the originals. (My second is “wait, this just a formalization of the standard Evil Bully Race”, isn’t it?” And my third is “how do they tell how much sfik others have for the purposes of killing them/ taking their stuff?)
My first thought on reading this is that a group of Kifish with human morality would eventually rule the world, if not actually wipe out the originals.
Why? I’m curious as to the reasoning behind this.
My second is “wait, this just a formalization of the standard Evil Bully Race”, isn’t it?”
Yes. The Kif are the villains through most of the series. (Note; most, not all. There are some individual Kif who, while still remaining sfik-maximisers, make significant efforts to aid the heroes and avert a major war).
And my third is “how do they tell how much sfik others have for the purposes of killing them/ taking their stuff?
Mainly reputation, along with a certain degree of body language. This is not perfect, however; a Kif more or less has as much sfik as he can persuade others that he has, until such time as he fails in some task (in which case his followers will immediately defect to the side of whoever defeated him. In fact, they will often defect as soon as it looks like he is starting to fail; your average Kifish footsoldier does not believe in glorious last stands).
It’s also worth noting that a Kif who elects to become the follower of a given leader is expected not to kill or take the stuff of the other followers of the same leader, and the leader will enforce this by killing troublemakers.
The Kif, like the rationalist, plays to win, no matter what that takes. They will keep promises if they feel that a reputation for keeping promises will help them to win later. They are perfectly capable of seeing, and taking advantage of, common goals; they can and will make alliances with each other, and with members of other species, as and where necessary. They have their own mental biases; but the highest-sfik Kif gain their status, in part, by being able to correct for those biases to some degree.
They would actually make reasonable rationalists, if it wasn’t for their racial tendency to defect in Prisoners’ Dilemmas and their complete lack of human morality. They’d certainly love the idea of rationality, because it leads to more sfik.
As far as success goes; they are not the biggest economic power in the series (that’s the non-violent Stsho); they are not the biggest political power in the series (that’s probably the Mahendo’sat), they don’t have the best technology (that’s the enigmatic Knnn), they may be the biggest military power in the series (or they may be second to the Knnn; the Mahendo’sat also have a comparable fleet), but not by much of a margin. (Especially since they’re having a civil war at the time; two different Kif are contending for the position of species-wide leader).
They’re a threat directly to the protagonist, and directly to the protagonists’ home planet (which is most certainly not a major military power); and their civil war threatens to start dragging in other species and getting really messy.
I didn’t say they were irrational, I said their goals (kill or frustrate high sfik individuals) were harder to co-operate on then our goals (maximise everyone’s happiness, say.) If there were only two humans left, we would work to rebuild, but they would kill each other, or at least work to thwart each other’s goals.
EDIT: Incidentally, if it’s possible to have negative sfik, does that mean you can gain sfik by helping the disadvantaged?
Succeeding in any aim gains sfik, as long as the aim is not trivial. Subjugating a group of other Kif to build a spaceship is a suitable aim; especially as you can then use that ship afterwards to accomplish more aims (and you’ve already got a subjugated crew).
But yes, two Kif, alone, are not a stable equilibrium. (Among other things, they only eat living food, and not plants. Two Kif with no other live animals around are the only source of food for each other—they have no qualms about cannibalism). Depending on the individuals, however, they may well decide to cooperate temporarily, and rebuild, in order to increase their long-term odds of survival. (They don’t care about their legacy, however. Being killed is The End. It’s a bit of a mystery why they would ever try to have children). Long-term survival beats a temporary sfik gain.
EDIT: Incidentally, if it’s possible to have negative sfik, does that mean you can gain sfik by helping the disadvantaged?
Not directly—that’s a trivial aim. But it’s perfectly within the Kif character to offer the disadvantaged a deal, something along the lines of “Join my followers, and I will help you now in order to obtain your labour later; betray me later, and I will kill you” and then use the extra footsoldier to gain sfik in some way. (If the disadvantaged was disadvantaged by a common enemy, they might simply turn up, help the poor fellow back on his feet, let him heal a bit, then give him a gun and point him at the guy who originally hurt him).
I’m not sure that it’s possible to have negative sfik without dying. It’s certainly possible to have zero.
But yes, two Kif, alone, are not a stable equilibrium. (Among other things, they only eat living food, and not plants. Two Kif with no other live animals around are the only source of food for each other—they have no qualms about cannibalism). Depending on the individuals, however, they may well decide to cooperate temporarily, and rebuild, in order to increase their long-term odds of survival. (They don’t care about their legacy, however. Being killed is The End. It’s a bit of a mystery why they would ever try to have children). Long-term survival beats a temporary sfik gain.
Good point. I meant something more along the lines of a small post-apocalyptic group, but you take my point; rebuilding is useless if it requires, say, your death, or would prevent you from frustrating other Kif. They can co-operate, but they don’t want to; it’s unnatural and inherently bad—like a human killing other humans.
Not directly—that’s a trivial aim. But it’s perfectly within the Kif character to offer the disadvantaged a deal, something along the lines of “Join my followers, and I will help you now in order to obtain your labour later; betray me later, and I will kill you” and then use the extra footsoldier to gain sfik in some way. (If the disadvantaged was disadvantaged by a common enemy, they might simply turn up, help the poor fellow back on his feet, let him heal a bit, then give him a gun and point him at the guy who originally hurt him).
I’m not sure that it’s possible to have negative sfik without dying. It’s certainly possible to have zero.
So if I take something corpse wanted to keep (grave goods?) I achieve positive infinity sfik? Or do they have to be actively resisting? Could they set up traps?
They can co-operate, but they don’t want to; it’s unnatural and inherently bad—like a human killing other humans.
The usual Kifish model of society is one powerful leader forcing everyone else to do as he says (in a post-apocalyptic situation, if only one Kif has got hold of a gun, then he will be the leader until such time as someone takes it from him). It’s more subjugation than cooperation (and there’s always a certain amount of competition to be the leader) but it does result in everyone moving in the same direction, at least when the leader can see.
So if I take something corpse wanted to keep (grave goods?) I achieve positive infinity sfik? Or do they have to be actively resisting? Could they set up traps?
What could a corpse possibly want to keep? Besides which, yes, they have to be actively resisting. They could set up traps, but it’s hard to see any reason why a Kif would bother; he doesn’t care what happens after he’s dead. I guess a Kif could go after the grave goods of another species (non-Kif individuals can gain sfik—specieism is one of the evils that the Kif do not usually practice) but they’d only gain the (finite) sfik for defeating the traps, not the infinite sfik for defeating the dead person.
Kif will often threaten to eat the hearts of their enemies. This could be considered as taking something (the heart) from a corpse. However, one gains only a finite amount of sfik for doing so (some for killing the enemy in a clear and public manner, more for doing so at close range instead of employing a sniper (note that all Kif dress alike, in dark robes, presumably in order to confuse snipers; in the last book, one Kif appears in a silver-trimmed robe, which instantly marks him as having extremely high sfik—high enough to be identifiable from a distance and get away with it)).
The usual Kifish model of society is one powerful leader forcing everyone else to do as he says (in a post-apocalyptic situation, if only one Kif has got hold of a gun, then he will be the leader until such time as someone takes it from him). It’s more subjugation than cooperation (and there’s always a certain amount of competition to be the leader) but it does result in everyone moving in the same direction, at least when the leader can see.
[emphasis added]
Sure, but humans can maintain co-operation on a much larger scale by simply having compatible goals.
What could a corpse possibly want to keep? Besides which, yes, they have to be actively resisting. They could set up traps, but it’s hard to see any reason why a Kif would bother; he doesn’t care what happens after he’s dead. I guess a Kif could go after the grave goods of another species (non-Kif individuals can gain sfik—specieism is one of the evils that the Kif do not usually practice) but they’d only gain the (finite) sfik for defeating the traps, not the infinite sfik for defeating the dead person.
That was exactly what I was thinking of; humans are known for our reluctance to part with worldly possesions, even in death.
Kif will often threaten to eat the hearts of their enemies. This could be considered as taking something (the heart) from a corpse. However, one gains only a finite amount of sfik for doing so (some for killing the enemy in a clear and public manner, more for doing so at close range instead of employing a sniper
It sounds like the sfik of the defeated individual is being used merely as an approximation of the difficulty of overcoming them.
(note that all Kif dress alike, in dark robes, presumably in order to confuse snipers; in the last book, one Kif appears in a silver-trimmed robe, which instantly marks him as having extremely high sfik—high enough to be identifiable from a distance and get away with it)).
I had assumed they would try and hide, generally, from becoming well-known. Why was this one in identifiable clothing? For the challenge? Seems risky.
It’s more subjugation than cooperation (and there’s always a certain amount of competition to be the leader) but it does result in everyone moving in the same direction, at least when the leader can see. [emphasis added]
Sure, but humans can maintain co-operation on a much larger scale by simply having compatible goals.
Probably true. A Kif might claim that they make up the difference by not having irrational personality clashes, and refusing to follow a charismatic leader who is a total idiot (both known failure modes of humanity). Though I don’t think that that would actually make up the entire difference. (It’s probably also worth mentioning that while Kif have jump-drive-capable spaceships, several varieties of weapons, good knowledge of torture and truth serums capable of working on even non-Kif biologies, they do not have doctors. A Kif is expected to heal his own wounds, or die, more or less. This probably means that the truth serums they have were stolen from other species).
It sounds like the sfik of the defeated individual is being used merely as an approximation of the difficulty of overcoming them.
Exactly correct.
I had assumed they would try and hide, generally, from becoming well-known. Why was this one in identifiable clothing? For the challenge? Seems risky.
Because he (Vikkhtimakt) actually did have the sfik to get away with it. Having massively positive sfik, means that he’s massively difficult to kill; wearing the identifiable robe means that he has massively positive sfik (with a side chance that he’s an idiot, but in that case why is he still alive?). Any Kif who’s not a total idiot would hesitate at this point, and find out why he’s so identifiable before pulling the trigger; and it turns out to be well-known among the Kif (and thus easy for a potential assassin to find out) that this particular one is the top lieutenant of someone with even higher sfik (spoilers if I define that more exactly—the question of exactly who Vikkhtimakt is working for is a major plot point in that book), who will be Most Displeased if Vikkhtimakt gets killed. (The prudent Kif will therefore only kill Vikkhtimakt as part of a plot to supplant—and kill—his leader; whose extreme sfik means that a prudent Kif will have second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts before attempting that challenge, and will certainly give due consideration to killing the leader first, without warning, instead).
A Kif is expected to heal his own wounds, or die, more or less. This probably means that the truth serums they have were stolen from other species
And not, say, become the bonded slave of his healer? I guess such submission would be damaging to one’s sfik, but not so much as dying.
it turns out to be well-known among the Kif (and thus easy for a potential assassin to find out) that this particular one is the top lieutenant of someone with even higher sfik
Ahh. So the trick is to kill him and not tell anyone.
And not, say, become the bonded slave of his healer? I guess such submission would be damaging to one’s sfik, but not so much as dying.
Once he’s healed, if the healer is not strong enough to keep him subjugated, he’ll simply go away (possibly killing the healer in the process). If the healer is strong enough to keep him subjugated—well, then said healer can probably more easily subjugate healthy Kif to start with.
All Kifish negotiations consider the possibility of either party reneging at any stage in the future (and Kif will renege immediately if they gain some advantage in the process)
Ahh. So the trick is to kill him and not tell anyone.
What’s the point of that? If you don’t tell anyone, then you don’t get the sfik. A Kif has only as much sfik as he can persuade others that he has.
Once he’s healed, if the healer is not strong enough to keep him subjugated, he’ll simply go away (possibly killing the healer in the process). If the healer is strong enough to keep him subjugated—well, then said healer can probably more easily subjugate healthy Kif to start with.
Explosive collars, or equivalent if they lack heads.
What’s the point of that? If you don’t tell anyone, then you don’t get the sfik. A Kif has only as much sfik as he can persuade others that he has.
In practice, sure, but I got the impression that they valued actually gaining sfik, not merely pretending to have it (like a human valuing actually saving orphans, even though pretending to accrues benefits as well.) Was I mistaken?
Explosive collars, or equivelent if they lack heads.
Okay, that’s a good idea. Not mentioned in the book, but I can see a Kif going for it.
In practice, sure, but I got the impression that they valued actually gaining sfik, not merely pretending to have it (like a human valuing actually saving orphans, even though pretending to accrues benefits as well.) Was I mistaken?
They value sfik in more like the way as a human values reputation (which bears a lot of similarity to sfik). If no-one knows about it, it doesn’t count either way (a Kif may try to suppress knowledge of some failure, if this seems possible).
It is also common among Kif to claim to have more sfik than one has; in the process, one may in fact gain the extra sfik (say, by attracting followers with the bluff, and then using them to succeed in some task). Of course, if one bluffs too hard, then one gets a task that one cannot complete; and if one fails, or admits an inability to complete the task, one likely gets killed, so there’s an incentive not to bluff too high. (If one succeeds in the task, then one is assumed to have had sufficient sfik all along; the bluff becomes fact through general agreement).
It’s also worth noting that a Kif does not need to know who pulled the trigger to take revenge. In the absence of that knowledge, Kifish “revenge” might simply mean killing everyone present on the space station or other area in question (so everyone else nearby suddenly has a very strong motive to find out who did it before the Leader gets back, and present said Leader with the assassin’s disembodied head in the hope of turning away any further indiscriminate wrath, and possibly even gaining the Leader’s favour in the process). Whether the Leader would actually do this or not is irrelevant; the assassin’s head will anyhow be removed (if he can be identified), just in case.
Irritatingly, if a Kif does do this and get away with it, then six months later some ambitious underling several solar systems away might claim to be Vikkhtimakt’s killer, and get away with the sfik in any case.
Fair enough, I just assumed it was more of an honour code. I guess there’s no such thing as a low-key Kif that rules from the shadows, then. Chalk one more victory up for the human resistance I postulated earlier.
EDIT: It probably says something about me that just sort of assumed explosive collars were in common use. It might be seen as somehow “cheating”, though; it’s a lot easier to subdue someone with an implant than a stick.
Fair enough, I just assumed it was more of an honour code. I guess there’s no such thing as a low-key Kif that rules from the shadows, then. Chalk one more victory up for the human resistance I postulated earlier.
If there was, he’d still claim responsibility for his actions—possibly in the form of a note left at the scene claiming that “The Crimson Shadow did this!”. He doesn’t ever need to associate the name of the Crimson Shadow with his face; he can just as easily deliver orders to his underlings remotely, with voice-distorting telephones. (Of course, this means that he clearly doesn’t have the sfik to show his face; he fears someone stronger, and a fair majority of his followers will defect to the “someone stronger” instead. So, you’re right, it’s not really practical in the end).
EDIT: It probably says something about me that just sort of assumed explosive collars were in common use. It might be seen as somehow “cheating”, though; it’s a lot easier to subdue someone with an implant than a stick.
Also, an external collar may be removeable; it’s also worth noting that the only way to send a signal faster-than-light in this universe is in a jumpdrive-capable ship (and that has a few other disadvantages, mainly in that it takes some time to dock safely), so if a follower can get to another solar system and knows that his boss won’t be visiting for the next twenty-four hours, then he has twenty-four hours to try to get the thing off.
An internal collar largely evades this problem, as long as the underling isn’t willing to take a bit out of his own neck to escape. (But how much sfik would that sort of dangerous escape be worth?)
That’s true, you can always get far enough away that the boss can’t hurt you, no matter the tech level; radio and such merely extends it (yet another advantage of humanity.) In fact, since presumably the implant would need to be surgically inserted in the first place, so it’s never perfect. Although most fictional explosive collars react adversely to tampering, and once portable brainscans become available treachery is impossible; luckily this destroys narrative in any case.)
EDIT: wait, how does a Kif with a secret identity work?
That’s true, you can always get far enough away that the boss can’t hurt you, no matter the tech level; radio and such merely extends it
I realised after typing that up that I’d managed to miss what would probably be the obvious Kifish solution to the problem—kill the person holding the detonator (a quick draw and an explosive bullet to the brain would do just fine). Tamper-proofing on the collar doesn’t matter in that case, as it is not removed; and the collar can’t stop a long-range sniper.
and once portable brainscans become available treachery is impossible; luckily this destroys narrative in any case.
Portable brainscans are not available in the series (and I don’t see the Kif using them in any case. Sure, I can make more copies of me, but each copy would want to kill the original and take over, so it’s kind of risky...)
EDIT: wait, how does a Kif with a secret identity work?
I’m not entirely sure. They all look fairly similar to each other and usually dress to hide the differences (the protagonist simply cannot tell them apart at all, a significant disadvantage—worse yet, their smell makes her sneeze) so anonymity is simple enough; it would be fairly straightforward for a Kif to claim to be a different Kif, perhaps with the help of some makeup to fool his fellow Kif. (It would be kind of harder to claim to be human).
I realised after typing that up that I’d managed to miss what would probably be the obvious Kifish solution to the problem—kill the person holding the detonator (a quick draw and an explosive bullet to the brain would do just fine). Tamper-proofing on the collar doesn’t matter in that case, as it is not removed; and the collar can’t stop a long-range sniper.
Well, yeah. It’s a weapon; a highly effective weapon. That depends on you having the target at your mercy at some point.
Portable brainscans are not available in the series (and I don’t see the Kif using them in any case. Sure, I can make more copies of me, but each copy would want to kill the original and take over, so it’s kind of risky...)
No, like checking to see if someone’s plotting against you.
EDIT: wait, how does a Kif with a secret identity work?
That is to say, how does it work for a race who’s chief value is reputation if they have two (or more) separate identities?
Well, yeah. It’s a weapon; a highly effective weapon. That depends on you having the target at your mercy at some point.
At all points. Just because he’s wearing an explosive collar now doesn’t mean he won’t shoot you—it just means that he’ll do so very suddenly.
No, like checking to see if someone’s plotting against you.
Oh, right. Yes, I can see that getting a lot of use; just be careful when using the machine (anyone who was thinking about plotting will likely start shooting at about that point).
That is to say, how does it work for a race who’s chief value is reputation if they have two (or more) separate identities?
I do not know. The question did not come up in the series.
At all points. Just because he’s wearing an explosive collar now doesn’t mean he won’t shoot you—it just means that he’ll do so very suddenly.
He has to be at your mercy to get the collar on. After that, you have a powerful weapon against him. Not a perfect weapon, but it should be at least as good as your fists, eh?
Oh, right. Yes, I can see that getting a lot of use; just be careful when using the machine (anyone who was thinking about plotting will likely start shooting at about that point).
Not if it’s attached to their head and contains a bomb, set to go off if they betray you!
But that kind of thing sort of destroys narrative tension, so it’s not going to happen.
I do not know. The question did not come up in the series.
If I had to guess, I would say that the highest-value ID is the “real” one, and the other is merely a cover to throw off suspicion. Otherwise the whole “dressing all alike” thing could cause problems.
He has to be at your mercy to get the collar on. After that, you have a powerful weapon against him. Not a perfect weapon, but it should be at least as good as your fists, eh?
Very true. Even a little better than a gun, because it’s harder to miss and you don’t have to bother to aim. (Just don’t use the wrong detonator, that would be embarrassing).
If I had to guess, I would say that the highest-value ID is the “real” one, and the other is merely a cover to throw off suspicion. Otherwise the whole “dressing all alike” thing could cause problems.
That seems reasonable. One would expect all successes to be claimed by the “real” identity, and all failures to be shunted to the “false” identity; though this may result (if handled poorly) in people asking why Real Identity hasn’t yet had Fake Identity killed as an example to the others?
I’m using a kind fo functional role analysis: the role of morality is to regulate the behaviour of each individual to account for the preferences of others. That isn’t an intuition in the sense of “men kissing - yeuch!”
The intuition of “men kissing—yeuch!” is superseded by other intuitions. There’s a whole sequence on metaethics, you know. And you haven’t answered my question.
You have first-order moral intuitions, yes, and you have intuitions about how to resolve contradictions between these intuitions. Yes? That’s how everyone acquires knowledge of morality. do you have some other method of acquiring such knowledge?
I only have “intuitions about how to resolve contradictions” inasmuch as rationality in general has an intutive basis. If there is a problem of comparing intuitions against intutions in (meta)ethics, there is a similar problem in rationality.
Indeed. I had already noticed I was talking nonsense and retracted the comment by the time I recieved this. Sorry. I have now given an actual, non-stupid reply here.
Could you taboo “morality” for me, please? I suspect we are talking at cross-purposes.
You think paperclipping is morality?
As I said, I suspect we are using different definitions of “morality”; could we proceed without using the term?
It would have helped if you had said why you think we have differnt definitions. I don’t think I am asserting anything unsual (as far as the wider world is concerned) when I say morality is principallly about regulating interactions between people so that one persons actions take the interests of affected parties into account. Since, to me, that is a truism, it is hard for me to guess why anyone would demur. Other LWers have defined morality as decision theory, as something that just guides their actions, without necessarily taking others into account. I think that is clearly wrong because it suggests that a highly effective serial killer is “good”, since they are maximising their own value. But now I am struggling to guess something you could easily just tell me.
You stated that there was some way to determine the validity of our ethics—by which I meant the moral preferences humans hold, as distinct from whatever source may have given them to us, be tit prisoner’s dilemmas or the will of God—without recourse to those same ethical intuitions.
When challenged on this assertion, you stated that our preferences may be revealed as incoherent by logic; yet, as I pointed out, an agent’s preferences may be perfectly coherent without being anything we would regard as “right”.
So either there has been some misunderstanding, or … show us this mysterious method of determining the Rightness of something without recourse to our ethical intuitions.
I stated:
emphasis added. Your counterexample was paperclipping, which you say is coherent. My response was:
So you still need an example of coherent morlaity that is somehow readically different from ours, showing that coherent morality doens’t converge enought to be called objective (or at least EDIT: intersubjective).
May I refer you to the Chanur series, by C.J. Cherryh? Depicted in that series are several alien species along with alien modes of thought and alien moralities.
Consider for a moment the Kif. The Kif are a race of carnivores; they lack the internal wiring to appreciate emotions (as you and I understand the term “emotion”) and eat their food live (the notion of eating dead carrion disgusts them, no matter whether it’s been cooked in the meantime). Their terminal value is to maximise a quantity that they refer to as sfik, which has the following properties, among others:
If you die, then your sfik instantly goes to negative infinity. Personal survival is of massive value to the Kif. (Survival of others, incidentally, is entirely ignored).
Succeeding in any task demonstrates high sfik, with more sfik for more difficult tasks (and more for making it look easy, as compared to narrowly winning).
Being able to hold onto something that someone else wants shows greater sfik than the person trying to take it. Conversely, taking something that someone else holds shows greater sfik than the person holding it.
Since every Kif will do his utmost to protect his own life, killing another being shows a lot of sfik. This is proportional to the sfik of the person being killed (any high-status Kif is also a high-value target).
Of course, a high-sfik Kif gets to that position by being very hard to kill. He may even attract followers, on the basis that he will protect his followers from everybody else (anyone killing one of his followers takes sfik from him in the act, and so he will strive to avoid that). Note that a Kif leader does not promise to protect his followers from himself, and indeed will often kill a follower who has not proved useful (either directly, or by sending him on a suicide mission (and killing him directly if he does not go)).
Since they do not share human emotions, they do not grasp the concept of ‘friendship’. The closest translation in their language is “temporary-ally-of-convenience”.
It’s a radically different form of morality; murder is not considered a crime in Kifish society; but it’s also coherent (though more complex than paperclipping). I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “it’s ability to actually be morality”, though; that looks like a circular definition to me.
I think I am with Peterdjones on this: I don’t see how this can be called morality—it’s certainly a set of values, sfik-seeking is certainly something that motivates Kifs, and which they prefer to do; but to call it “morality” in the sense that humans recognize the word is no better than calling it “lust” (though it contains no sex) or “love” (though it contains no element of caring for others).
That it’s in their brains and motivates them isn’t enough to call it “morality” meaningfully. For it to be called “morality” meaningfully it has to motivate them in roughly the same manner that human morality motivates humans. Baby-eaters and Superhappies were motivated by morality, even if they were vastly different moralities. I don’t see anything in the Kifs that could be called morality.
So how does one distinguish a system of motivations from being a system of morality or not?
Well, I think one of the minimal elements required to identify something as morality, is that one tends to prefer other people to be moral, at least in general, at least when their immorality doesn’t help you directly.
Babyeaters wanted other people to eat babies, and superhappies wanted other people to..superhappy, but Kifs don’t seem to have any reason to encourage sfik-seeking in others.
Kif find sfik-seeking entities to be easier to predict, and therefore easier to control. Thus they prefer sfik-seeking behaviour in others, for purely practical reasons.
That’s an interesting distinction. So a paperclip maximizer would seem to be an entity with a moral system.
I’d certainly be more willing to assign that label to Clippy’s system than to Kifs’. Though perhaps Clippy is too well-adjusted—if its preferences are identical to its morality, instead of merely having its morality influence its preferences, that may still be slightly too different than the way morality motivates humans to be given that label.
I’d feel better calling Clippy’s clippyness “morality” if it occasionally made staples and then felt bad about it, or it atleast had a personal preference for yellow paperclips in its vicinity while allowing that paperclips of other colors are just as clippy.
I am not convinced that Kif morality is coherent. Looking at it game-theoretically:
There is a set of actions (A) that run a non-infinitessimal risk of infinite loss, ie anything that has a risk of losing ones life.
There is a set of actions (B) that have a non-infintiessimal chance of finite gain.
There is set of inactions that (C) that maintain an equilibrium.
Game theoretically, a Kif should avoid A, and avoid B if it entails A to any. Because losses are infinite and gains finite, it makes no sense to endanger ones life for any putative gain. (Because of the infinity in A, the relative likelihoods of loss and gain don’t matter). Kif should either avoid each other, or adopt pacifism (both versions of C). (Kif in fact have much more motivation to be pacifistic than humans). Kif Pacifism if is clearly not C J Cherryh’s intention.
The key to whole arguent is the “infinite”. Perhaps the “Infinite” is an exageration, or perhaps C J Cherryh is one of those people who thinks infinity is a large finite number. The intended results would follow in that case. Infinity is game changing.
Except they don’t have eachothers’ sourcecode, so even inaction or pacifist policies incur non-infinitesimal risk of infinite loss. There is, in fact, no set of actions which does not incur such a risk, due to free rider effects and multiplayer PD and all this tragedy of the commons going on in there.
I don’t think the “infinite” poses quite as much of a problem as it first seems, though it does make things kind of complicated.
I don’t see what sourcecode has to do with it. A Kif can (perhaps only) minimise the risk of infintite loss by keeping interaction to an absolute minimum, preferably zero. That is not mere “inaction”in the sense of standing quietly in a elevator full of other Kif. That is “Another Kif....RUN!!!”
I don’t see what free riding has to do with it either.
Running from other Kifs also (but less obviously) increases risk of -inf sfik. Cooperating or living socially with other kifs vastly increases your chances of survival in the wild, I presume. You run into a risk equilibrium problem (which can be reduced to raw math if you have enough data about the world and precise sfik values for Kif life and thing-ownership, though it does become very complicated maths (i.e. far more complex than I can solve) due to instrumental value effects and relational comparisons of -inf sfik risks) pretty quickly, but it does seem analytically solvable.
So Kifs have strong incentive to work together in some manner in order to avoid the high risks of death when going at it alone in the wilds, but also various recursive functions that compute sfik with some instrumental -inf sfik parameters plugging into the +fin sfik actions. Since this is apparently the case for most Kifs working together, but you have no guarantee that all Kifs can reliably precommit to cooperation (which is where source code factors in—if you could read the source code, you could see which ones can reliably precommit and under what conditions and how to enforce this), so there’s also some incentive to freeride on the Kif cooperation wave and gain a few sfiks by killing some other kifs and taking some of their things, so long as your ability to do so and the marginal gains from this (as well as the weighted instrumental parameter of -inf sfik risk reduction) outweigh the increase in -inf sfik that your higher status incur.
As an intuitive guess, Kifs are extremely cautious socially, but on average power structures and hierarchies of exponential rarity still form, as every Kif is aware that other Kifs have incentive to freeride and this means a risk that they get killed in the process of this free riding.
Vastly is infinitely less than infinity.
They don’t exactly sound like social animals to me. The ideas that Kifs need to associate with other Kifs, but risk infinitley negative disutulity from doing are not obviously compatible, to put it mildly. They are cat-like solitary predators writ large.
This isn’t what the math says. The math says:
Go alone: 35% chance of -inf sfik within the next year. Cooperate with other Kifs: X% chance of -inf sfik within the next year, with X being a function of the number of Kifs in the group and the chance of freeriders and the chance of being selected and so on.
So clearly for some situations and some numbers, i.e. for some functions, cooperating is superior to soloing.
Since all Kif end up dead, they all end up on minus infinity. The question then is why they ever bother doing anything particular inbetween.
Hyperbolic discounting heuristics, i.e. not valuing the state and utility of their distant future selves as much as their immediate self, perhaps in some manner which implements an asymptotic returns system for sufficiently distant selves, I would wager.
Granted, that’s just the easiest explanation that comes to mind. You’re correct that since this isn’t stated (AFAIK?) it’s a curious issue.
“Infinite” was probably an exaggeration on my part. Individual Kif certainly do all that they can to avoid death, don’t care much about their legacy, and are very surprised to find that other races have the strange concept of a ‘martyr’ - that sfik can count after death.
I have sometimes talked in terms of objective morality, because it seems truer than subjective morality. But morality is not really objective because it will vary with biology, and is of no use to sticks or stones. It is truer still to say that it is intersubjective. Humans are not going to adopt Kif morality because humans are not Kif.
My first thought on reading this is that a group of Kifish with human morality would eventually rule the world, if not actually wipe out the originals. (My second is “wait, this just a formalization of the standard Evil Bully Race”, isn’t it?” And my third is “how do they tell how much sfik others have for the purposes of killing them/ taking their stuff?)
Why? I’m curious as to the reasoning behind this.
Yes. The Kif are the villains through most of the series. (Note; most, not all. There are some individual Kif who, while still remaining sfik-maximisers, make significant efforts to aid the heroes and avert a major war).
Mainly reputation, along with a certain degree of body language. This is not perfect, however; a Kif more or less has as much sfik as he can persuade others that he has, until such time as he fails in some task (in which case his followers will immediately defect to the side of whoever defeated him. In fact, they will often defect as soon as it looks like he is starting to fail; your average Kifish footsoldier does not believe in glorious last stands).
It’s also worth noting that a Kif who elects to become the follower of a given leader is expected not to kill or take the stuff of the other followers of the same leader, and the leader will enforce this by killing troublemakers.
Cooperation and common goals. Are they portrayed as highly successful in the series?
The Kif, like the rationalist, plays to win, no matter what that takes. They will keep promises if they feel that a reputation for keeping promises will help them to win later. They are perfectly capable of seeing, and taking advantage of, common goals; they can and will make alliances with each other, and with members of other species, as and where necessary. They have their own mental biases; but the highest-sfik Kif gain their status, in part, by being able to correct for those biases to some degree.
They would actually make reasonable rationalists, if it wasn’t for their racial tendency to defect in Prisoners’ Dilemmas and their complete lack of human morality. They’d certainly love the idea of rationality, because it leads to more sfik.
As far as success goes; they are not the biggest economic power in the series (that’s the non-violent Stsho); they are not the biggest political power in the series (that’s probably the Mahendo’sat), they don’t have the best technology (that’s the enigmatic Knnn), they may be the biggest military power in the series (or they may be second to the Knnn; the Mahendo’sat also have a comparable fleet), but not by much of a margin. (Especially since they’re having a civil war at the time; two different Kif are contending for the position of species-wide leader).
They’re a threat directly to the protagonist, and directly to the protagonists’ home planet (which is most certainly not a major military power); and their civil war threatens to start dragging in other species and getting really messy.
I didn’t say they were irrational, I said their goals (kill or frustrate high sfik individuals) were harder to co-operate on then our goals (maximise everyone’s happiness, say.) If there were only two humans left, we would work to rebuild, but they would kill each other, or at least work to thwart each other’s goals.
EDIT: Incidentally, if it’s possible to have negative sfik, does that mean you can gain sfik by helping the disadvantaged?
Succeeding in any aim gains sfik, as long as the aim is not trivial. Subjugating a group of other Kif to build a spaceship is a suitable aim; especially as you can then use that ship afterwards to accomplish more aims (and you’ve already got a subjugated crew).
But yes, two Kif, alone, are not a stable equilibrium. (Among other things, they only eat living food, and not plants. Two Kif with no other live animals around are the only source of food for each other—they have no qualms about cannibalism). Depending on the individuals, however, they may well decide to cooperate temporarily, and rebuild, in order to increase their long-term odds of survival. (They don’t care about their legacy, however. Being killed is The End. It’s a bit of a mystery why they would ever try to have children). Long-term survival beats a temporary sfik gain.
Not directly—that’s a trivial aim. But it’s perfectly within the Kif character to offer the disadvantaged a deal, something along the lines of “Join my followers, and I will help you now in order to obtain your labour later; betray me later, and I will kill you” and then use the extra footsoldier to gain sfik in some way. (If the disadvantaged was disadvantaged by a common enemy, they might simply turn up, help the poor fellow back on his feet, let him heal a bit, then give him a gun and point him at the guy who originally hurt him).
I’m not sure that it’s possible to have negative sfik without dying. It’s certainly possible to have zero.
Good point. I meant something more along the lines of a small post-apocalyptic group, but you take my point; rebuilding is useless if it requires, say, your death, or would prevent you from frustrating other Kif. They can co-operate, but they don’t want to; it’s unnatural and inherently bad—like a human killing other humans.
So if I take something corpse wanted to keep (grave goods?) I achieve positive infinity sfik? Or do they have to be actively resisting? Could they set up traps?
The usual Kifish model of society is one powerful leader forcing everyone else to do as he says (in a post-apocalyptic situation, if only one Kif has got hold of a gun, then he will be the leader until such time as someone takes it from him). It’s more subjugation than cooperation (and there’s always a certain amount of competition to be the leader) but it does result in everyone moving in the same direction, at least when the leader can see.
What could a corpse possibly want to keep? Besides which, yes, they have to be actively resisting. They could set up traps, but it’s hard to see any reason why a Kif would bother; he doesn’t care what happens after he’s dead. I guess a Kif could go after the grave goods of another species (non-Kif individuals can gain sfik—specieism is one of the evils that the Kif do not usually practice) but they’d only gain the (finite) sfik for defeating the traps, not the infinite sfik for defeating the dead person.
Kif will often threaten to eat the hearts of their enemies. This could be considered as taking something (the heart) from a corpse. However, one gains only a finite amount of sfik for doing so (some for killing the enemy in a clear and public manner, more for doing so at close range instead of employing a sniper (note that all Kif dress alike, in dark robes, presumably in order to confuse snipers; in the last book, one Kif appears in a silver-trimmed robe, which instantly marks him as having extremely high sfik—high enough to be identifiable from a distance and get away with it)).
Sure, but humans can maintain co-operation on a much larger scale by simply having compatible goals.
That was exactly what I was thinking of; humans are known for our reluctance to part with worldly possesions, even in death.
It sounds like the sfik of the defeated individual is being used merely as an approximation of the difficulty of overcoming them.
I had assumed they would try and hide, generally, from becoming well-known. Why was this one in identifiable clothing? For the challenge? Seems risky.
Probably true. A Kif might claim that they make up the difference by not having irrational personality clashes, and refusing to follow a charismatic leader who is a total idiot (both known failure modes of humanity). Though I don’t think that that would actually make up the entire difference. (It’s probably also worth mentioning that while Kif have jump-drive-capable spaceships, several varieties of weapons, good knowledge of torture and truth serums capable of working on even non-Kif biologies, they do not have doctors. A Kif is expected to heal his own wounds, or die, more or less. This probably means that the truth serums they have were stolen from other species).
Exactly correct.
Because he (Vikkhtimakt) actually did have the sfik to get away with it. Having massively positive sfik, means that he’s massively difficult to kill; wearing the identifiable robe means that he has massively positive sfik (with a side chance that he’s an idiot, but in that case why is he still alive?). Any Kif who’s not a total idiot would hesitate at this point, and find out why he’s so identifiable before pulling the trigger; and it turns out to be well-known among the Kif (and thus easy for a potential assassin to find out) that this particular one is the top lieutenant of someone with even higher sfik (spoilers if I define that more exactly—the question of exactly who Vikkhtimakt is working for is a major plot point in that book), who will be Most Displeased if Vikkhtimakt gets killed. (The prudent Kif will therefore only kill Vikkhtimakt as part of a plot to supplant—and kill—his leader; whose extreme sfik means that a prudent Kif will have second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts before attempting that challenge, and will certainly give due consideration to killing the leader first, without warning, instead).
And not, say, become the bonded slave of his healer? I guess such submission would be damaging to one’s sfik, but not so much as dying.
Ahh. So the trick is to kill him and not tell anyone.
Once he’s healed, if the healer is not strong enough to keep him subjugated, he’ll simply go away (possibly killing the healer in the process). If the healer is strong enough to keep him subjugated—well, then said healer can probably more easily subjugate healthy Kif to start with.
All Kifish negotiations consider the possibility of either party reneging at any stage in the future (and Kif will renege immediately if they gain some advantage in the process)
What’s the point of that? If you don’t tell anyone, then you don’t get the sfik. A Kif has only as much sfik as he can persuade others that he has.
Explosive collars, or equivalent if they lack heads.
In practice, sure, but I got the impression that they valued actually gaining sfik, not merely pretending to have it (like a human valuing actually saving orphans, even though pretending to accrues benefits as well.) Was I mistaken?
Okay, that’s a good idea. Not mentioned in the book, but I can see a Kif going for it.
They value sfik in more like the way as a human values reputation (which bears a lot of similarity to sfik). If no-one knows about it, it doesn’t count either way (a Kif may try to suppress knowledge of some failure, if this seems possible).
It is also common among Kif to claim to have more sfik than one has; in the process, one may in fact gain the extra sfik (say, by attracting followers with the bluff, and then using them to succeed in some task). Of course, if one bluffs too hard, then one gets a task that one cannot complete; and if one fails, or admits an inability to complete the task, one likely gets killed, so there’s an incentive not to bluff too high. (If one succeeds in the task, then one is assumed to have had sufficient sfik all along; the bluff becomes fact through general agreement).
It’s also worth noting that a Kif does not need to know who pulled the trigger to take revenge. In the absence of that knowledge, Kifish “revenge” might simply mean killing everyone present on the space station or other area in question (so everyone else nearby suddenly has a very strong motive to find out who did it before the Leader gets back, and present said Leader with the assassin’s disembodied head in the hope of turning away any further indiscriminate wrath, and possibly even gaining the Leader’s favour in the process). Whether the Leader would actually do this or not is irrelevant; the assassin’s head will anyhow be removed (if he can be identified), just in case.
Irritatingly, if a Kif does do this and get away with it, then six months later some ambitious underling several solar systems away might claim to be Vikkhtimakt’s killer, and get away with the sfik in any case.
Fair enough, I just assumed it was more of an honour code. I guess there’s no such thing as a low-key Kif that rules from the shadows, then. Chalk one more victory up for the human resistance I postulated earlier.
EDIT: It probably says something about me that just sort of assumed explosive collars were in common use. It might be seen as somehow “cheating”, though; it’s a lot easier to subdue someone with an implant than a stick.
If there was, he’d still claim responsibility for his actions—possibly in the form of a note left at the scene claiming that “The Crimson Shadow did this!”. He doesn’t ever need to associate the name of the Crimson Shadow with his face; he can just as easily deliver orders to his underlings remotely, with voice-distorting telephones. (Of course, this means that he clearly doesn’t have the sfik to show his face; he fears someone stronger, and a fair majority of his followers will defect to the “someone stronger” instead. So, you’re right, it’s not really practical in the end).
Also, an external collar may be removeable; it’s also worth noting that the only way to send a signal faster-than-light in this universe is in a jumpdrive-capable ship (and that has a few other disadvantages, mainly in that it takes some time to dock safely), so if a follower can get to another solar system and knows that his boss won’t be visiting for the next twenty-four hours, then he has twenty-four hours to try to get the thing off.
An internal collar largely evades this problem, as long as the underling isn’t willing to take a bit out of his own neck to escape. (But how much sfik would that sort of dangerous escape be worth?)
That’s true, you can always get far enough away that the boss can’t hurt you, no matter the tech level; radio and such merely extends it (yet another advantage of humanity.) In fact, since presumably the implant would need to be surgically inserted in the first place, so it’s never perfect. Although most fictional explosive collars react adversely to tampering, and once portable brainscans become available treachery is impossible; luckily this destroys narrative in any case.)
EDIT: wait, how does a Kif with a secret identity work?
I realised after typing that up that I’d managed to miss what would probably be the obvious Kifish solution to the problem—kill the person holding the detonator (a quick draw and an explosive bullet to the brain would do just fine). Tamper-proofing on the collar doesn’t matter in that case, as it is not removed; and the collar can’t stop a long-range sniper.
Portable brainscans are not available in the series (and I don’t see the Kif using them in any case. Sure, I can make more copies of me, but each copy would want to kill the original and take over, so it’s kind of risky...)
I’m not entirely sure. They all look fairly similar to each other and usually dress to hide the differences (the protagonist simply cannot tell them apart at all, a significant disadvantage—worse yet, their smell makes her sneeze) so anonymity is simple enough; it would be fairly straightforward for a Kif to claim to be a different Kif, perhaps with the help of some makeup to fool his fellow Kif. (It would be kind of harder to claim to be human).
Well, yeah. It’s a weapon; a highly effective weapon. That depends on you having the target at your mercy at some point.
No, like checking to see if someone’s plotting against you.
That is to say, how does it work for a race who’s chief value is reputation if they have two (or more) separate identities?
At all points. Just because he’s wearing an explosive collar now doesn’t mean he won’t shoot you—it just means that he’ll do so very suddenly.
Oh, right. Yes, I can see that getting a lot of use; just be careful when using the machine (anyone who was thinking about plotting will likely start shooting at about that point).
I do not know. The question did not come up in the series.
This is why you invent the deadman switch.
Indeed. It’s an arms race.
He has to be at your mercy to get the collar on. After that, you have a powerful weapon against him. Not a perfect weapon, but it should be at least as good as your fists, eh?
Not if it’s attached to their head and contains a bomb, set to go off if they betray you!
But that kind of thing sort of destroys narrative tension, so it’s not going to happen.
If I had to guess, I would say that the highest-value ID is the “real” one, and the other is merely a cover to throw off suspicion. Otherwise the whole “dressing all alike” thing could cause problems.
Very true. Even a little better than a gun, because it’s harder to miss and you don’t have to bother to aim. (Just don’t use the wrong detonator, that would be embarrassing).
That seems reasonable. One would expect all successes to be claimed by the “real” identity, and all failures to be shunted to the “false” identity; though this may result (if handled poorly) in people asking why Real Identity hasn’t yet had Fake Identity killed as an example to the others?
How do you identify morality without simply comparing it to your own intuitions?
I’m using a kind fo functional role analysis: the role of morality is to regulate the behaviour of each individual to account for the preferences of others. That isn’t an intuition in the sense of “men kissing - yeuch!”
The intuition of “men kissing—yeuch!” is superseded by other intuitions. There’s a whole sequence on metaethics, you know. And you haven’t answered my question.
Says who? In my theory? In EY’s theory? Why should I care?
I know. I don’t find it very persuasive or cogent.
Yes I have. I identify morality by performing a functional role analysis and seeing whether candidates fit the funtional role.
You have first-order moral intuitions, yes, and you have intuitions about how to resolve contradictions between these intuitions. Yes? That’s how everyone acquires knowledge of morality. do you have some other method of acquiring such knowledge?
I only have “intuitions about how to resolve contradictions” inasmuch as rationality in general has an intutive basis. If there is a problem of comparing intuitions against intutions in (meta)ethics, there is a similar problem in rationality.
Could you describe a moral belief you changed in the past? For the purposes of an example.
It’s an intuition in the sense of “killing=bad”.
What I said was not an intution in the sense of killing=bad, because
a) it’s not an intiution. It’s a functional role anaysis
b) It’s metaethical (what kind of thing morality is) not first-order ethical (what is wrong)
Indeed. I had already noticed I was talking nonsense and retracted the comment by the time I recieved this. Sorry. I have now given an actual, non-stupid reply here.