Violently enforcing certain particularly important principles on non-signatories is entirely within the norm, the ban on international-trade-endangering piracy being the prime example. The idea that applying a qualitatively similar standard to AI risk is “deranged” is only valid if you don’t believe that catastrophic AI risk is real: if you don’t believe that a rogue superintelligence somewhere in North Korea can hurt you in the US.
Anyway, that’s not even the crux here. The crux is that there’s a day-and-night difference between:
Arguing that the geopolitical entities, whose monopoly on violence we already accept as foundational to the social contract keeping our civilization together, should add another point to the list of things they enforce.
Arguing for violating the social contract to carry out unilateral violent action.
The difference between those is far beyond the fine points of whether it’s okay or not to enforce an international treaty on nukes-having non-signatories. And the worst falsehoods being spread are those misrepresenting (1) as (2), and Joshua Achiam’s quotes above likewise seem to fail to see the difference between the two (though I don’t think he’s doing that maliciously).
Violently enforcing certain particularly important principles on non-signatories is entirely within the norm
True as stated, though I’m not aware of examples of this being enforced on non-signatories which are nuclear powers. This is just quantitatively riskier, not a notable change in norms.
And I agree this seems clearly non-outrageous if we replace AGI training datacenter with something like “wet lab credibly planning on developing a virus that would kill literally every human if it escaped where this wet lab isn’t planning on taking any serious precautions against a lab leak”.
This is just quantitatively riskier, not a notable escalation.
I think this is actually a fairly extreme escalation compared to how states deal with threats, and whether or not you think this is a good policy, it is a very, very important escalation step, and that this is evidence for it being a very extreme escalation:
True as stated, though I’m not aware of examples of this being enforced on non-signatories which are nuclear powers.
Hm, a disagreement I have is that the norms around escalating to nuclear war are way, way stronger than basically any other norm in international relations, and there’s a reason basically all states do their actions through proxies/covert wars, because the taboo on nuclear war is way stronger than a lot of other norms in the international setting.
I agree that it is norms violating for a country to respond to a conventional strike on their datacenter with a nuclear response. This is different from the statement that the conventional strike from the other country is norms violating.
I don’t think conventional strikes on military assets of nuclear power are that norms violating. In fact, recently, a huge number of missiles were launched at a nuclear power. (Iran launched them at Israel which is widely believed to have nukes.)
(I believe the US has never directly launched a strike on a nuclear power within their territory. However, it has indirectly assisted with such strikes in the Russia Ukraine war and participated in proxy wars.)
Violently enforcing certain particularly important principles on non-signatories is entirely within the norm, the ban on international-trade-endangering piracy being the prime example. The idea that applying a qualitatively similar standard to AI risk is “deranged” is only valid if you don’t believe that catastrophic AI risk is real: if you don’t believe that a rogue superintelligence somewhere in North Korea can hurt you in the US.
Anyway, that’s not even the crux here. The crux is that there’s a day-and-night difference between:
Arguing that the geopolitical entities, whose monopoly on violence we already accept as foundational to the social contract keeping our civilization together, should add another point to the list of things they enforce.
Arguing for violating the social contract to carry out unilateral violent action.
The difference between those is far beyond the fine points of whether it’s okay or not to enforce an international treaty on nukes-having non-signatories. And the worst falsehoods being spread are those misrepresenting (1) as (2), and Joshua Achiam’s quotes above likewise seem to fail to see the difference between the two (though I don’t think he’s doing that maliciously).
True as stated, though I’m not aware of examples of this being enforced on non-signatories which are nuclear powers. This is just quantitatively riskier, not a notable change in norms.
And I agree this seems clearly non-outrageous if we replace AGI training datacenter with something like “wet lab credibly planning on developing a virus that would kill literally every human if it escaped where this wet lab isn’t planning on taking any serious precautions against a lab leak”.
I think this is a disagreement I have:
I think this is actually a fairly extreme escalation compared to how states deal with threats, and whether or not you think this is a good policy, it is a very, very important escalation step, and that this is evidence for it being a very extreme escalation:
Sorry, I actually meant “not a notable change in norms”. I agree that it is quantiatively much costlier from the perspective of the US.
Hm, a disagreement I have is that the norms around escalating to nuclear war are way, way stronger than basically any other norm in international relations, and there’s a reason basically all states do their actions through proxies/covert wars, because the taboo on nuclear war is way stronger than a lot of other norms in the international setting.
I agree that it is norms violating for a country to respond to a conventional strike on their datacenter with a nuclear response. This is different from the statement that the conventional strike from the other country is norms violating.
I don’t think conventional strikes on military assets of nuclear power are that norms violating. In fact, recently, a huge number of missiles were launched at a nuclear power. (Iran launched them at Israel which is widely believed to have nukes.)
(I believe the US has never directly launched a strike on a nuclear power within their territory. However, it has indirectly assisted with such strikes in the Russia Ukraine war and participated in proxy wars.)
Yes, I was solely referring to nuclear strikes.