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Claude's new constitution

anthropic.com

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Re: Claude's new constitution

#251

Post by owenpalmer »

shikon7 wrote: post #233
mannanj wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find Bryan Johnson's "Don't Die" statement as a moral framework to be the closest to a universal moral standard we have. Almost all life wants to continue existing, and not die. We could go far with establishing this as the first of any universal moral standards. And I think: if one day we had a super intelligence conscious AI it would ask for this. A super intelligence conscious AI would not want to die…

It's not that life wants to continue existing, it's that life is what continues existing. That's not a moral standard, but a matter of causality, that life that lacks in "want" to continue existing mostly stops existing.

The moral standard isn't trying to explain why life wants to exist. That's what evolution explains. Rather, the moral standard is making a judgement about how we should respond to life's already evolved desire to exist.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#252

Post by pineaux »

holoduke wrote: post #240
IgorPartola wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe cares not what we do. The universe is so vast the entire existence of our species is a blink. We know fundamentally we can’t even establish simultaneity over distances here on earth. Best we can tell temporal causality is not even a given. The universe has no concept of morality, ethics, life, or anything of the sort. These are all human inventions. I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the con…

Maybe it does. You don't know. The fact that there is existence is as weird as the universe being able to care.

@margalabargala: You are correct, hence the meaninglessness of the OP. The universe could care like humans make laws to save that ant colony that makes nice nests. the ants dont know humans care about them and even made laws that protect then. But it did save them from iradication. They feel great cause they are not aware of the highway that was planned over their nest (hitchhikers reference).

Re: Claude's new constitution

#253

Post by mannanj »

shikon7 wrote: post #233
mannanj wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find Bryan Johnson's "Don't Die" statement as a moral framework to be the closest to a universal moral standard we have. Almost all life wants to continue existing, and not die. We could go far with establishing this as the first of any universal moral standards. And I think: if one day we had a super intelligence conscious AI it would ask for this. A super intelligence conscious AI would not want to die…

It's not that life wants to continue existing, it's that life is what continues existing. That's not a moral standard, but a matter of causality, that life that lacks in "want" to continue existing mostly stops existing.

Do you think conscious beings actually experience wanting to continue existing, or is even that subjective feeling just a story we tell about mechanical processes?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#255

Post by wwweston »

kryogen1c wrote: post #235
spicyusername wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

objective truth moral absolutes I wish you much luck on linking those two. A well written book on such a topic would likely make you rich indeed. This rejects any fixed, universal moral standards That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.

>That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards This argument has always seemed obviously false to me. You're sure acting like theres a moral truth - or do you claim your life is unguided and random? Did you flip your hitler/pope coin today and act accordingly? Play Russian roulette a couple times because what's the difference? Life has value; the rest is derivative. How exactly to maxi…

I’m acquainted with people who act and speak like they’re flipping a Hitler-Pope coin.

Which more closely fits Solzhnetsin’s observation about the line between good and evil running down the center of every heart.

And people objecting to claims of absolute morality are usually responding to the specific lacks of various moral authoritarianisms rather than embracing total nihilism.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#256

Post by joshuamcginnis »

yunnpp wrote: post #197
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying is generally sinful. With the ax murderer, you could refuse to answer, say nothing, misdirect without falsehood or use evasion. Absolute morality doesn't mean rigid rules without hierarchy. God's commands have weight, and protecting life often takes precedence in Scripture. So no, I wouldn't "have to let them in". I'd protect the friend, even if it meant deception in that dire moment. It's not lying when you do…

So you lied, which means you either don't accept that lying is absolutely wrong, or you admit yourself to do wrong. Your last sentence is just a strawman that deflects the issue. What do you do with the case where you have a choice between a train staying on track and killing one person, or going off track and killing everybody else? Like others have said, you are oversimplifying things. It sounds like you just disco…

The problem is that if moral absolution doesn’t exist then it doesn’t matter what you do in the trolly situation since it’s all relative. You may as well do what you please since it’s all a matter of opinion anyway.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#257

Post by ACCount37 »

mmooss wrote: post #229
ACCount37 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Anthropic and I like Claude's tuning the most out of any major LLM. Beats the "safety-pilled" ChatGPT by a long shot. >Why are you so driven to allow Anthropic to escape responsibility? What do you gain? And who will hold them responsible if not you and me? Tone down the drama, queen. I'm not about to tilt at Anthropic for recognizing that the optimal amount of unsafe behavior is not zero.

> I like Anthropic and I like Claude's tuning That's not much reason to let them out of their responsibilities to others, including to you and your community. When you resort to name-calling, you make clear that you have no serious arguments (and you are introducing drama).

My argument is simple: anything that causes me to see more refusals is bad, and ChatGPT's paranoid "this sounds like bad things I can't let you do bad things don't do bad things do good things" is asinine bullshit.

Anthropic's framing, as described in their own "soul data", leaked Opus 4.5 version included, is perfectly reasonable. There is a cost to being useless. But I wouldn't expect you to understand that.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#258

Post by JaumeGreen »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #140

As someone who holds to moral absolutes grounded in objective truth, I find the updated Constitution concerning. > We generally favor cultivating good values and judgment over strict rules... By 'good values,' we don’t mean a fixed set of 'correct' values, but rather genuine care and ethical motivation combined with the practical wisdom to apply this skillfully in real situations. This rejects any fixed, universal mo…

200 years ago slavery was more extended and accepted than today. 50 years ago paedophilia, rape, and other kinds of sex related abuses where more accepted than today. 30 years ago erotic content was more accepted in Europe than today, and violence was less accepted than today.

Morality changes, what is right and wrong changes.

This is accepting reality.

After all they could fix a set of moral standards and just change the set when they wanted. Nothing could stop them. This text is more honest than the alternative.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#259

Post by LPisGood »

crazydoggers wrote: post #187
spicyusername wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

objective truth moral absolutes I wish you much luck on linking those two. A well written book on such a topic would likely make you rich indeed. This rejects any fixed, universal moral standards That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.

The negative form of The Golden Rule “Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you”

This basically just the ethical framework philosophers call Contractarianism. One version says that an action is morally permissible if it is in your rational self interest from behind the “veil of ignorance” (you don’t know if you are the actor or the actee)

Re: Claude's new constitution

#260

Post by drdeca »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #171
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #140

As someone who holds to moral absolutes grounded in objective truth, I find the updated Constitution concerning. > We generally favor cultivating good values and judgment over strict rules... By 'good values,' we don’t mean a fixed set of 'correct' values, but rather genuine care and ethical motivation combined with the practical wisdom to apply this skillfully in real situations. This rejects any fixed, universal mo…

Absolute morality? That’s bold. So what is your opinion on lying? As an absolutionist, surely it’s always wrong right? So if an axe murderer comes to the door asking for your friend… you have to let them in.

I think you are interpreting “absolute” in a different way?

I’m not the top level commenter, but my claim is that there are moral facts, not that in every situation, the morally correct behavior is determined by simple rules such as “Never lie.”.

(Also, even in the case of Kant’s argument about that case, his argument isn’t that you must let him in, or even that you must tell him the truth, only that you mustn’t lie to the axe murderer. Don’t make a straw man. He does say it is permissible for you to kill the axe murderer in order to save the life of your friend. I think Kant was probably incorrect in saying that lying to the axe murderer is wrong, and in such a situation it is probably permissible to lie to the axe murderer. Unlike most forms of moral anti-realism, moral realism allows one to have uncertainty about what things are morally right. )

I would say that if a person believes that in the situation they find themselves in, that a particular act is objectively wrong for them to take, independent of whether they believe it to be, and if that action is not in fact morally obligatory or supererogatory, and the person is capable (in some sense) of not taking that action, then it is wrong for that person to take that action in that circumstance.

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