X-Message-Number: 15972
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 18:38:09 -0800
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Re: Trust In All-Powerful Lords

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote

> PEOPLE ARE NOT YOUR PROPERTY.  They can NEVER be your
> property.  Everyone owns himself, herself, or verself
> and can never be owned by anyone else.

> Tell me, if I suddenly revealed that I'm an Observer
> construct and that you're living in a sim, would you
> suddenly decide that you have no rights?

I really don't think that "rights" in the abstract mean
anything.  Usually when someone forms a sentence "X has
the right to do Y", it really means nothing more than
"I approve of X being able to do Y".  To answer your
question, in the case that I find out that I'm living
in a sim that belongs to someone else, I'd say, "Gee,
I hope they keep this going, it's fun!"  What would
you do, take to the streets and protest?  :-)

When people gather to form governments, many of these
issues surface, such as "Should one man be able to own
another?", and "Should private property be sacrosanct?"
Those schemes in the past that did not agree to respect
private property floundered and failed, because it turns
out that the way people are constituted, wealth creation,
prosperity, and progress have never been possible without
strong safeguards for private property.

Now, to be sure, you are hardly trying to bring people
together to form a government.  You are merely telling
everyone how it is going to be after some program (that
you hope that you get to influence) takes over.  So many
people hate the idea of someone or something taking over,
that as an educational or persuasive enterprise, your
endeavor is pretty naive.

There are many fine people who actually would restrain
themselves if given an opportunity to, say, take over
the world.  I probably would not so restrain myself;
(for one reason, if I suddenly had the ability to, then
a lot of people might, and I trust myself more than I
trust almost anyone else).  So unlike many, I'm not
clamoring against you that "you have no right to do
this" (as I said, that doesn't mean very much).

Moreover, if it appeared imminent that somebody's AI
was going to take over the solar system, then I'd be
motivated to thoroughly check out a number of them, 
and maybe sign up for protection with one or another,
and would certainly join many extropians, cryonicists,
and libertarians in throwing our support to the one
(of the viable ones) that appeared to be the least
intrusive.

Why not support the Sysop?  I just don't think that it
will ever have a clear principle of what and what not
to let people do.  Even the United States no longer 
does: here, you cannot practice medicine without a
license, nor can you try to fire a rocket into space,
nor can you do a host of other things without express
permission from the government.  Soon, you won't be
able to make a clone, either.

So far as I can see, the infinite nosiness of the
Sysop that you promote arises from a deep utilitarian
belief or position, that makes it your business whether
or not I give someone life or not.  We need hardly talk
of the future to expose the principle at work here.  I
am opposed to legal rights for animals, and do not believe
that we actually need statutes on the books forbidding
cruelty to animals (if we ever did need them), even 
though I base my beliefs on utilitarianism also.  The
reason is simply that if given freedom, so few people
would seriously mistreat animals that the laws on the
books cause more harm than good.

In every case so far, when people band together to form
governments, those peoples who establish freedom and
a regard for private property do the best.  A way of
making our current disagreement interesting to many,
would be to rephrase it as follows:

If in the near future, it became clear that only one AI
in the solar system would rule (for techical reasons),
and we had a chance to contribute to the principles by
which that government would rule, how many reading this
would agree with Eliezer that people should not be
allowed to run simulations (and not be allowed to torture
animals), and how many would agree with me, that our

government should exist only to enforce freely arrived-at
contracts, and to protect private property?

Lee Corbin

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