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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

701–710 of 853 posts

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#701
post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine in theory to criticise the ethics of the idea alone, but there can be a limit to that. If the CEO of a mining company has the "ingenious, un-PC idea" to increase mining profits by lobbying Congress and donating to sympathetic lawmakers to ease EPA regulations so he can dump mercury directly in the river, my ethical argument against the idea is that it damages the environment and the people in the communitie…

But can't you see the difference here? There is no argument that dumping mercury in a river is good for society, the environment or anything else. It's only "good" for this companies profits and even the real value there is a question given the impact on most people working there. But extending human life? Maybe it will be bad. Maybe people will keep having children at the same rate and with no one dying anymore the…

On the other hand, people not only drive, but also oppose progress; as a smarter than me person (don't remember who it was) said: Science advances one funeral at a time (it's basically like evolution). If people stop dying (barring accidents), we'll basically stop advancing as well.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#702
post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people think you have to watch what you say in China, and they almost always are people who have never been there. There are very specific political things you can't do, but otherwise literally not one gives a shit about you. You can say what you want, and unless you specifically go organize a large group of people and screaming in public something politically sensitive, no one cares. Ideally in a society we…

I found that to be the case in Cuba. It actually felt more liberating than a typical American city, in that I could walk down the street alone drinking a beer at night in the middle of the city without fear. However, I also know that, like most totalitarian regimes, they'll allow a good bit of flex until they decide not to anymore, and then the crackdown is swift.

You should try central Europe - you can walk the city with beer in hand AND not have a dictator that can imprison you for life for banality.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#703
post #516
post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "you are unethical for doing this research" is very different from saying "I think there are serious problems with extending human life". One is a legitimate criticism and is vital to public debate. The other is name calling.

Sure. But does it really matter? Are we that sensitive? I mean, the essay makes the argument that allowing disparagement of gay people might be a necessary in order to allow the investigation of novel physics (which, wtf) - why not also make the argument that being called unethical might be a necessary cost to allow the investigation of life extension? Is the idea worth perusing? Then you can probably stand to be cal…

> Then you can probably stand to be called a name or two. Especially when you're also proposing allowing whole groups of people to be disparaged in the name of progress.

I don't really know what to make of your interpretation of Altman's statement. He was making the point that if a physicist has homophobic views, we should not dismiss their contributions to physics for that reason alone. Put another way, we should be tolerant of people, but not necessarily of their views.

> Sure. But does it really matter? Are we that sensitive?

Sensitivity isn't the issue: it's that calling someone names for reasons that are entirely speculative (and longer lifespan == ecological catastrophe is definitely that) is the domain of at least two other groups: grade-school children and the alt-right.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't find it bad that a bunch of people, based on their own non-objective oppinion What is an 'objective opinion'? > get to ruin someones business and/or career? Are you saying that it's a bad idea for people to boycott businesses, or that boycotting businesses shouldn't be allowed ? If it's the former, how do you distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' reasons to refrain from purchasing from a business? If it's…

>What is an 'objective opinion'? Look, things like murder or pedophilia are unabigiously evil. So it's not out of line or particularly dangerous to say that a person who engages in one of those activities or supports/defends those who do is unethical and possibly even evil. Extending the life of humans? That's not objectively evil. It has not been clearly demonstrated to be a negative on anything . In fact there are…

>Look, things like murder or pedophilia are unambiguously evil.

But they're absolutely not. What's the one thing everyone says they would do if they could time travel? Kill Hitler. Those actions are unambiguously evil to you which makes them subjectively unethical.

>So it's not out of line or particularly dangerous to say that a person who engages in one of those activities or supports/defends those who do is unethical and possibly even evil.

>Extending the life of humans? That's not objectively evil. It has not been clearly demonstrated to be a negative on anything. In fact there are plenty of arguments that it could fix a lot of problems we have. So to come out and attach a label to someone who dares work on such a thing, before we even know what it would mean is dangerous. I feel like society, at least a larger portion of it, understood this in the past. Your creating taboos. Things we don't dare talk about or explore because we fear having our lives destroyed by twitter lynch mobs and the like.

Here I begin to question whether you know what objective and subjective really mean. You're basically using "objective" to mean anything that agrees with your subjective opinion. All ethics is subjective, there is no objective base on which to call someone unethical.

>No one should force you to have to shop where you don't want to. But what you actually want to do is knowing as "mobbing" in Europe and it's generally illegal (at least in some countries). The issue is one of power. With twitter flash mobs and so on today, you can quickly destroy someone's life with this kind of behavior. Most people don't mind if what that person is doing is obviously unethical but this thread is applying this to things that are completely unsettled. No one knows what will happen if we extend life because it's never existed before.

This has nothing to do with boycotting which is what we're talking about. Mobbing != a boycotting campaign and I think you know that. So put away the crazy comparisons and make a case for why people shouldn't be able to participate in a boycotting campaign.

>If you said something critical of Hitler, certain people took offense. They felt Germany had been in a bad way for a long time and this man was doing something about it. Why would you question him unless you wanted to destory Germany? So they started supressing thought. If your paper was critical of the Fuhrer brown shirts would storm in, trash the place and assualt people. As we know, eventually there was no one left to say anything eventually.

This is so stretched... You're making the jump from me exercising my individual freedom to call someone out to brown shirts. Come down to earth please.

>Live and let live. There are people out there with different views than you. Some of those views might be down right offensive if you really thought about it. But society has always been this way and until recently we still managed to avoid getting so polarized about it and trying to censor everyone.

Read a history book, polarization is not a new thing, censorship is not a new thing and people exercising their freedom of speech to decry unethical people and actions is not censorship, it's the opposite. What you want: removing my ability to boycott, removing my ability to speak freely is censorship though.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of high profile examples like Mozillas CEO being kicked out for donating to conservative groups or Damore's firing. As far as mass campaigns, there's a number of managers that have admitted to keeping political blacklists just within Google: https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/google-manifesto-blacklists.h... And there are various large campaigns to dox people on the far right like https://www.npr.org/s…

Again, the Mozilla CEO held a belief that some of his employees didn't deserve the rights that other employees had. Should he have remained CEO if he shared his belief that blacks and whites shouldn't be allowed to marry? If your belief is that you want to deny rights to some people, you are going to be held accountable by society in the sense that you won't get to hold powerful jobs. You won't be arrested, but socie…

And at the time about 50% of Americans opposed same sex marriage. You can't be so polarized that you can't even tolerate half of the population. If we go down this road, companies in conservative areas will start firing their liberal CEOs and employees. After all, they believe just as vehemently as you, that you want to take away their rights. Nothing good comes from this trend.

And your presentation of his belief is, again, very uncharitable. A decent percentage of conservatives were in favor of civil unions and other legal work arounds to give gay couples the same benefits as straight ones. Many didn't really care what gay people did and were just afraid of the slippery slope.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#706

Shortly prior to the recent US presidential election, I worked next to a nice, smart young man from California who went to a well-known progressive university in the bay area. Politics was very rarely discussed at work, but in the weeks before the election, there was some cross talk in the isles. He trusted me enough to message me privately that he was planning to vote for Trump. At that time, I was quite anxious abo…

> I think that a pretty big chunk of Trump's votes came from people who would otherwise not have voted for him...but did so because they sensed, correctly, that their thoughts, ideas and voices were being marginalized (and demonized) by progressives.

I'm not sure this observation has much value. Voting for a candidate that shares your values in a time when those values aren't popular is equivalent to doing so when those values are popular. Either way you're voting for a candidate that shares your values. I'm never going to place a spite-vote for someone who doesn't support my views just because my views are unpopular.

And in any case, I think certain views should be demonized. Expressing disparaging things about gay people (the example from the article) should be viewed with the same revulsion as we would today view the historical opinion that people of color were in some way "better suited" for slavery. The view that some people are somehow "less than" shouldn't be tolerated. The paradox of tolerance is very real.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#707
post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people think you have to watch what you say in China, and they almost always are people who have never been there. There are very specific political things you can't do, but otherwise literally not one gives a shit about you. You can say what you want, and unless you specifically go organize a large group of people and screaming in public something politically sensitive, no one cares. Ideally in a society we…

I found that to be the case in Cuba. It actually felt more liberating than a typical American city, in that I could walk down the street alone drinking a beer at night in the middle of the city without fear. However, I also know that, like most totalitarian regimes, they'll allow a good bit of flex until they decide not to anymore, and then the crackdown is swift.

As a tourist that's how you felt, but did you speak to the people who live there? What you'll find is a people scared to criticize their dictatorship government, which is incredibly rich and lives a life of luxury whilst their citizens are very poor.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#708
post #514

The author says that it's safer to discuss "controversial" ideas in Beijing than America, but I wonder if that's partly because the ideas in question aren't actually controversial in Beijing. Presumably the ideas the author has in mind are those that might be interpreted to impugn certain disadvantaged groups. But if I found it more easy to say "gay people are degenerates" in Beijing, I don't think I would take that…

Yeah, whatever points this article had were completely marred by terrible examples. Saying it's easier to talk about things in China vs US. I've been to China and you can get thrown in jail for saying the type of things we say re. our political environment. My friends there have to speak in whispers in public while people in SF have no problem raging about our politicians. And saying we should "allow people to say di…

> Yeah, whatever points this article had were completely marred by terrible examples.

The article isn't that complicated. He meant to say exactly what he did say.

Which makes sense, given the entire point of tolerating free speech is that people are free to say terrible things, not "moderately uncomfortable" things.

Executive summary: (1) Open societies are more innovative. (2) Silicon Valley is becoming less tolerant of divergent viewpoints. (3) This is primarily culture-driven, but will likely have an effect on innovative science, which by definition starts as sounding somewhat crazy.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#709
post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that the culture of hospitality in Texas might be related to the values found in the Bible you are so quick to dismiss? Values are like the vitamins of culture: You don't notice how helpful they are until you get scurvy.

Culture of hospitality exists is many other places that has nothing to do with Bible. Example Afghanistan

Your point of course stands, but this example may not be ideal. It is a country where the predominant religion follows ideas very closely related to those in the Bible.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#710
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These ideas can and should be debated. Literally ostracizing people and thinking they are evil for having different opinions on them, is absurd. Agreed. But wait, is anyone actually getting ostracized now for having different opinions? Has Sam Altman been refused service somewhere, or denied employment, or suffered any consequence for holding the opinions he does, besides maybe being called a dick on Twitter? Becau…

People in this very thread are saying anyone who works on such technologies are inherently unethical people . Do you not see how this kind of labelling is dangerous and distructive to debate?

It’s called “freedom of speech” my dude, and it’s actually essential to debate, even (particularly!) if you don’t agree with it.
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