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Unexpected things that are people

bengoldhaber.substack.com

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Re: Unexpected things that are people

#81

Post by giraffe_lady »

kerkeslager wrote: post #48
robot-wrangler wrote: post #7

Thought provoking. Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. The thing with temples stems ultimately from fairly practical matters if they hold such treasure, but it's a magnet for strife, and actually kind of surprising that in the case-study mentioned they resisted the opportunity to justify abuse of po…

> Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. Straw man argument. I'm for regulating different things differently and as what they are: a corporation should be regulated as a corporation and a river should be regulated as a river.

update: I don't think this comment is correct, after kerkeslager's response to it. I'm leaving it intact underneath so the conversation still makes sense.

People on here almost universally value logical consistency over beneficial outcomes. By the HN moral consensus a rule that can be applied to all situations without modification is a good rule. It does not much matter what outcomes that produces.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#82

Post by saghm »

jama211 wrote: post #39
zkmon wrote: post #35

You should change the title to "Unexpected things that are legal entities ", to make it less click-baity.

I think it’s fine because it plays off the commonly stated “corporations are people” sentence that exists in the world.

Yeah, and I think it's fully intended to embrace how silly it sounds, given the tongue-and-cheek opening paragraph:

> It’s widely known that Corporations are People. This is universally agreed to be a good thing; I list Target as my emergency contact and I hope it will one day be the best man at my wedding.

It reminds me of that episode of Community where Subway enrolled a person who they hired to legally represent their corporate entity so that they could open a shop on campus without violating the school's rule that only student-run businesses were allowed.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#83

Post by jandrewrogers »

ACCount37 wrote: post #28
metada5e wrote: post #4

I recommend reading the book 'For Profit' for deeper knowledge on this topic - the book covers the origin of corporations and the ideas lying behind legal personhood. It sounds like a dry read but it is surprisingly well written and as much about history as about law. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60568507-for-profit Criminal and Civil liability are the two topics to focus on - you will find that non-human enti…

Amusingly enough, corporate personhood is one relatively straightforward pathway for a capable AGI to attain legal personhood. No novel legislation required. Just some legal grey areas and a whole lot of scheming.

This has been discussed quite a bit in various contexts. At least in the US these structures always resolve to a Natural Person as far as the law is concerned. Everything else is just obfuscation and indirection.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#86

Post by pugworthy »

It would be interesting if the "no cure, no pay" principle from right of salvage could be applied to medical treatment.

Something like this...

> The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.). If the operation fails, the doctor receives no payment, regardless of the effort or expense incurred.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#87

Post by arrosenberg »

jojomodding wrote: post #78
arrosenberg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This obviously has negative externalities, because while a corporation is easy to fine, it's hard to put in prison... but trying to approach it differently would be about as fun as modeling a CPU as a bunch of transistors. There's nothing stopping the legislature (other than their own self-interest) from passing a law that executives and board members are criminally liable for the malfeasance of their entity. We al…

This is already the case. Or rather, a corporation can not (e.g.) commit murder or theft because that usually requires some physical action. That physical action will be performed by a human, who can then be found guilty. If he was ordered to do so by (e.g.) the board, the board will be held as accessory to the crime and cam also be found guilty. The problem is just that the board can usually claim they did not know,…

If they know about malfeasance and don't stop it, they are complicit; if they don't know about it, they are grossly negligent. In either case, they should be held accountable for the crimes. Maybe in an ideal world it would not be that way, but since we are seeing corruption run amok in corporate board rooms, it's clear they need a greater incentive to police their organizations.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#88

Post by kerkeslager »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #81
kerkeslager wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. Straw man argument. I'm for regulating different things differently and as what they are: a corporation should be regulated as a corporation and a river should be regulated as a river.

update: I don't think this comment is correct, after kerkeslager's response to it. I'm leaving it intact underneath so the conversation still makes sense. People on here almost universally value logical consistency over beneficial outcomes. By the HN moral consensus a rule that can be applied to all situations without modification is a good rule. It does not much matter what outcomes that produces.

I don't buy that. It's not logically consistent to call a corporation a human when everyone knows a corporation isn't human, and the leakiness of the abstraction is obvious.

More likely, HN simply has the same distribution of intelligence (i.e., it's mostly near-average-intelligence people), and HN's members are just as susceptible to the same obvious propaganda as everyone else, especially when it might benefit you. HN is full of people who believe they're future rich people, so anything that benefits the rich is easy for HN folks to believe.

Throw in a bit of flattery for a bunch of people whose self-worth is based in their belief that they are intelligent, and you can manipulate HN folks just as easily as any other population. That's why I refuse to play into that narrative: HN folks aren't more logical than any other group and I refuse to pretend they are.

I have plenty of criticism of the rationalist movement, but one thing I think they get right is that if you are unable to conceive of yourself as irrational, you'll never identify your irrationalities and fix them--if you can't admit you are irrational sometimes, you are doomed to remain as irrational as you are.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#89

Post by Vecr »

pugworthy wrote: post #86

It would be interesting if the "no cure, no pay" principle from right of salvage could be applied to medical treatment. Something like this... > The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.)…

All you would get is even more insurance overhead and even higher nominal prices. People who pay cover people who don't, and doctors will get insurance to pay for all their failures.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#90

Post by ElevenLathe »

nocoiner wrote: post #77
ACCount37 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you need humans for a corporate structure to exist. But nothing prevents meat proxies from occupying the vital positions. Find a few sufficiently loyal humans, have them bring the corporate structure up. Arrange for good wages and proper incentives, set up checks and balances so that the system can tolerate and recover from meatbag failures. Make the corporation fully reliant on the AGI for normal functioning,…

That’s basically just the benefits of limited liability, that has nothing to do with AI personhood. And you’re basically just describing the formation of a legal entity, the reference to AGI could just as easily be replaced with “talented founder” or “dual class shares” or “poison pill” or something. In any event, the law tends to be responsive about establishing doctrines for extending liability to individuals invol…

OTOH if a fairy tale about AI is what it takes to get lawmakers to abandon (or at least reform) the corporate form, then let's tell the fairy tale.
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