Three points that seem salient to this disagreement:
Robin seems to object to the idea of happy slaves who prefer to serve, calling them ‘zombies.’ From a preference utilitarian point of view, it’s not clear why the preferences of obsessive servants take priority over obsessive replicators, but I do get the sense that Robin favors the latter, ceteris paribus.
Robin seems to take a more total utilitarian view to Eliezer’s average utilitarianism. If you think that, even after burning the cosmic commons and the like, average population over time will be higher in the competitive scenario, while singletons enable population restrictions (and are likely to enact them in a way that reduces preference satisfaction, i.e. doesn’t simply use resources to let fewer beings live longer and think faster).
Robin seems more committed to a specific current ethical view (preference utilitarianism), whereas Eliezer seems to expect with higher probability that he would change his moral views if he knew more, thought about it longer, etc. Uncertainty about morality supports a singleton: for many moralities, good outcomes will depend on a singleton, and a singleton can dissolve itself, while a colonization wave of replicators cannot be recalled.
Three points that seem salient to this disagreement:
Robin seems to object to the idea of happy slaves who prefer to serve, calling them ‘zombies.’ From a preference utilitarian point of view, it’s not clear why the preferences of obsessive servants take priority over obsessive replicators, but I do get the sense that Robin favors the latter, ceteris paribus.
Robin seems to take a more total utilitarian view to Eliezer’s average utilitarianism. If you think that, even after burning the cosmic commons and the like, average population over time will be higher in the competitive scenario, while singletons enable population restrictions (and are likely to enact them in a way that reduces preference satisfaction, i.e. doesn’t simply use resources to let fewer beings live longer and think faster).
Robin seems more committed to a specific current ethical view (preference utilitarianism), whereas Eliezer seems to expect with higher probability that he would change his moral views if he knew more, thought about it longer, etc. Uncertainty about morality supports a singleton: for many moralities, good outcomes will depend on a singleton, and a singleton can dissolve itself, while a colonization wave of replicators cannot be recalled.