Comments on “This is about you”

Let me say first that I like this page as poetry, and I think I am familiar with some of the intellectual background. Almost all of it rings true to me.

The only line that strikes me as problematic on first impression is: you do not have any “ethics”.

Intuitively I accede to everything on this page except to that line, to which I intuitively object: “yes, I do.”

I will note, though, that the ethics that I think of myself as having is pragmatic and contextualist; much of what James D. Wallace has said about this topic strikes me as right. From a description of one of his books: “To solve new problems, he asserts, we must adapt what we have learned from past problems to novel circumstances, sometimes appreciably changing our ways of dealing with certain kinds of issues.”

Is that still ethics? I think so. (Someone once said: “James D. Wallace’s view is well outside the mainstream.” So I concede that my “ethics” is not mainstream ethical theory.) If I said “I don’t have any ethics” to people who know me, they would have the same objection that I had to that line in this page: “yes, you do.”

What it should say, I think, is: you do not have any programmable “ethics”. That seems to be the point in this book?

I apologize if I am inappropriately nitpicking poetry.

I noticed that on another page Mike Travers stated essentially the same objection that I stated above (there the offending clause was essentially the same proposition as the one in question above, but substituting the word “values” for “ethics”): https://betterwithout.ai/AI-motivation/comments#c7749

There seems to be something here that needs to be thought through more or at least communicated in a different way. Mike and I agree that something is wrong in the way it is stated.

Dear David,

I think it would be great if you could expand somewhere on the following

these are all malign rationalist myths
they make you miserable when you take them seriously

Best
Hans

I would actually be super interested what you think about “virtue ethics” as taught by Theravada and Stoic philosophy. Not as stiff moralizing, but as a way to live a good/happy/liberated life.

I sent this page to my friend who is not technical but is worried about AI and she really liked it and then read the rest of the book.

The page ties the whole work together with vividness and meaningness and I don’t think anyone else could have written it.

The only reason to remove this page would be if it was going to be the first page of a new book of AI/meaning/non-dual poems

Cite it as an alms to humanity or some such thing in between the introduction and chapter one.

Love it btw!

I also enjoyed this page and I’d be sad to see it deleted. One thing I find confusing is I’m not sure who “you” is. To whom is this page addressed?

I’m guessing it’s addressed to the reader. But the link in the first sentence makes it seem like it’s addressed to a future AGI. The idea of pleading with a future AGI seems to undercut the message of the rest of the book.

Maybe clarifying this would help?