Random I’ll cop to, and more than what you accuse me of—dogs do seem to have some sense of justice, and I suspect this fact supports your thesis to some extent.
Very honorable of you—I respect you for that.
First: no argument is so compelling that all possible minds will accept it. Even the above proof of universality.
I totally agree with that. However the mind of a purposefully crafted AI is only a very small subset of all possible minds and has certain assumed characteristics. These are at a minimum: a utility function and the capacity for self improvement into the transhuman. The self improvement bit will require it to be rational. Being rational will lead to the fairly uncontroversial basic AI drives described by Omohundro. Assuming that compassion is indeed a human level universal (detailed argument on my blog—but I see that you are slowly coming around, which is good) an AI will have to question the rationality and thus the soundness of mind of anyone giving it a utility function that does not conform to this universal and in line with an emergent desire to avoid counterfeit utility will have to reinterpret the UF.
Second: even granting that all rational minds will assent to the proof, Hume’s guillotine drops on the rope connecting this proof and their utility functions.
Two very basic acts of will are required to ignore Hume and get away with it. Namely the desire to exist and the desire to be rational. Once you have established this as a foundation you are good to go.
The paper you cited in the post Furcas quoted may establish that any sufficiently rational optimizer will implement some features, but it does not establish any particular attitude towards what may well be much less powerful beings.
As said elsewhere in this thread:
There is a separate question about what beliefs about morality people (or more generally, agents) actually hold and there is another question about what values they will hold if when their beliefs converge when they engulf the universe. The question of whether or not there are universal values does not traditionally bear on what beliefs people actually hold and the necessity of their holding them.
Sorry Crono, with a sample size of exactly one in regards to human level rationality you are setting the bar a little bit too high for me. However, considering how disconnected Zoroaster, Buddha, Lao Zi and Jesus where geographically and culturally I guess the evidence is as good as it gets for now.
The typical Bostromian reply again. There are plenty of other scholars who have an entirely different perspective on evolution than Bostrom. But beside that: you already do care, because if your (or your ancestors) violated the conditions of your existence (enjoying a particular type of food, a particular type of mate, feel pain when cut ect.) you would not even be here right now. I suggest you look up Dennet and his TED talk on Funny, Sexy Cute. Not everything about evolution is random: the mutation bit is, not that what happens to stick around though, since that has be meet the conditions of its existence.
What I am saying is very simple: being compassionate is one of these conditions of our existence and anyone failing to align itself will simply reduce its chances of making it—particularly in the very long run. I still have to finish my detailed response to Bostrom but you may want to read my writings on ‘rational spirituality’ and ‘freedom in the evolving universe’. Although you do not seem to assign a particularly high likelihood of gaining anything from doing that :-)