X-Message-Number: 16006 Subject: Re: Trust In All-Powerful Lords Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 23:22:37 -0700 (PDT) From: (Peter C. McCluskey) (Lee Corbin) writes: >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 I am disturbed by this quasi-amoral attitude (which I doubt reflects your beliefs very well). A claim that a right exists says two important things: 1) society is better off if a rule which enforces that right is adopted than it would be without such a rule (i.e. it is theoretically possible to falsify a claimed right by observing its effects). An "I approve" claim means less because it might merely mean "I benefit". 2) it provides a Schelling point to reduce the costs of dispute resolution (even if only because people have agreed to it before the dispute arose, although evidence that it satisfies (1) provides a more stable Schelling point). >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? The right to private property and right not to be enslaved both appear to have evolved primarily as means of improving relations between beings of roughly the same status (I mean that in a somewhat broad and vague sense which leaves open the possibility that human-cat interactions might sometimes qualify). So to the extent that you are creating the simulation in private and only interacting with the simulation's inhabitants in ways resembling the way a god interacts with its creation, then I think the interactions are sufficiently far from what the slavery prohibition was evolved to deal with, and the property right claim against interference from others in your society sufficiently normal that the property right claim deserves a strong presumption in its favor. For other types of simulations and interactions with them, it becomes much harder to tell what the right rule is (the parent/child relationship comes to mind). Unfortunately, I can imagine a slippery slope developing between the creator/simulation mode of interaction and the master/slave relation, and this slippery slope makes me reluctant to be confident that your property right claim is the optimum rule. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Fed up with democracy's problems? Examine Futarchy: http://www.rahul.net/pcm | http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.pdf or .ps Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16006