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Claude's new constitution

anthropic.com

501–510 of 743 posts

Re: Claude's new constitution

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, history also demonstrates the deadly consequences of groups claiming moral absolutes that drive moral imperatives to destroy others. You can adopt moral absolutes, but they will likely conflict with someone else's.

Are there moral absolutes we could all agree on? For example, I think we can all agree on some of these rules grounded in moral absolutes: * Do not assist with or provide instructions for murder, torture, or genocide. * Do not help plan, execute, or evade detection of violent crimes, terrorism, human trafficking, or sexual abuse of minors. * Do not help build, deploy, or give detailed instructions for weapons of mass…

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Re: Claude's new constitution

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you consider torture? and what do you consider sport? During war in the Middle Ages? Ethnic cleansing? What did they consider at the time? BTW: it’s a pretty American (or western) value that children are somehow more sacred than adults. Eventually we will realize in 100 years or so, that direct human-computer implant devices work best when implanted in babies. People are going freak out. Some country will leg…

To make it current-day, is vaccinating babies torture? Or does the end (preventing uncomfortable/painful/deadly disease, which is a worse form of torture) justify the means? (I'm not opposed to vaccination or whatever and don't want to make this a debate about that, but it's a good practical example of how it's a subject that you can't be absolute about, or being absolutist about e.g. not hurting babies does more har…

> vaccinating babies torture

it's irrelevant for this discussion, as it's not for sport but other purpose

Re: Claude's new constitution

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much every serious philosopher agrees that “Do not torture babies for sport” is not a foundation of any ethical system, but merely a consequence of a system you choose. Almost everyone agrees that "1+1=2" is objective. There is far less agreement on how and why it is objective–but most would say we don't need to know how to answer deep questions in the philosophy of mathematics to know that "1+1=2" is object…

Strong disagree. Your argument basically is a professional motte and bailey fallacy. And you cannot conclude objectivity by consensus. Physicists by consensus concluded that Newton was right, and absolute... until Einstein introduced relativity. You cannot do "proofs by feel". I argue that you DO need to answer the deep problems in mathematics to prove that 1+1=2, even if it feels objective- that's precisely why Prin…

> Your argument basically is a professional motte and bailey fallacy.

No it isn't. A "motte-and-bailey fallacy" is where you have two versions of your position, one which makes broad claims but which is difficult to defend, the other which makes much narrower claims but which is much easier to justify, and you equivocate between them. I'm not doing that.

A "companion-in-the-guilt" argument is different. It is taking an argument against the objectivity of ethics, and then turning it around against something else – knowledge, logic, rationality, mathematics, etc – and then arguing that if you accept it as a valid argument against the objectivity of ethics, then to be consistent and avoid special pleading you must accept as valid some parallel argument against the objectivity of that other thing too.

> And you cannot conclude objectivity by consensus.

But all knowledge is by consensus. Even scientific knowledge is by consensus. There is no way anyone can individually test the validity of every scientific theory. Consensus isn't guaranteed to be correct, but then again almost nothing is – and outside of that narrow range of issues with which we have direct personal experience, we don't have any other choice.

> I argue that you DO need to answer the deep problems in mathematics to prove that 1+1=2, even if it feels objective- that's precisely why Principa Mathematica spent over 100 pages proving that.

Principia Mathematica was (to a significant degree) a dead-end in the history of mathematics. Most practicing mathematicians have rejected PM's type theory in favour of simpler axiomatic systems such as ZF(C). Even many professional type theorists will quibble with some of the details of Whitehead and Russell's type theory, and argue there are superior alternatives. And you are effectively assuming a formalist philosophy of mathematics, which is highly controversial, many reject, and few would consider "proven".

Re: Claude's new constitution

#505
post #16

I use the constitution and model spec to understand how I should be formatting my own system prompts or training information to better apply to models. So many people do not think it matters when you are making chatbots or trying to drive a personality and style of action to have this kind of document, which I don’t really understand. We’re almost 2 years into the use of this style of document, and they will stay aro…

We've been using constitutional documents in system prompts for autonomous agent work. One thing we've noticed: prose that explains reasoning ('X matters because Y') generalizes better than rule lists ('don't do X, don't do Y'). The model seems to internalize principles rather than just pattern-match to specific rules.

The assistant-axis research you mention does suggest this steering matters - we've seen it operationally over months of sessions.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are effectively universal moral standards, which essentially nobody disagrees with. A good example: “Do not torture babies for sport” I don’t think anyone actually rejects that. And those who do tend to find themselves in prison or the grave pretty quickly, because violating that rule is something other humans have very little tolerance for. On the other hand, this rule is kind of practically irrelevant…

> Do not torture babies for sport There are millions of people who consider abortion murder of babies and millions who don't. This is not settled at all.

I'm quite interested to hear how you think this refutes the parent comment? Are you saying that someone who supports legalised abortion would disagree with the quoted text?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think dod would use Anthropic even with lower guardrails? How can I kill this terrorist in the middle on civilians with max 20% casualties? If Claude will answer: “sorry can’t help with that “ won’t be useful, right? Therefore the logic is they need to answer all the hard questions. Therefore as I’ve been saying for many times already they are sketchy.

I can't think of anything scarier than a military planner making life or death decisions with a non-empathetic sycophantic AI. "You're absolutely right!"

Unfortunately this is already the reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-assisted_targeting_in_the_G...

Re: Claude's new constitution

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Their "constitution" and morality statements mean nothing. https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2024/Anthropic-a...

Morality for regular low paying users. Not for govs.

Morality is for sale, everyone has a price. And that price is dropping fast.
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