> Nobody rational would kill another person for no reason, but a soldier will bomb a village for the sake of their nation’s geostrategic position.
I think you're forgetting to control for the fact that the former would be severely punished for doing so, and the latter would be severely punished for not doing so?
> Nobody would throw someone out of their home or deny another person lifesaving medicine, but as a bank officer or an insurance agent, they make a living doing these things and sleep untroubled at night.
Again, you're forgetting to control for other variables. What if you paid them equally to do the same things?
Why should you "control" for these variables? AIs will effectively be punished for doing various inscrutable things by their own internal preferences.
> I think you're forgetting to control for the fact that the former would be severely punished for doing so, and the latter would be severely punished for not doing so?
That’s interesting and I think it’s more complicated. Here are some half-finished thoughts:
I imagine a grunt soldier would indeed be more likely to follow an order to nuke the world than a general would be to issue the order/push the button- and part of this is because the punishment for the grunt would be much greater, where the general is afforded more latitude in decision making.
However, the grunt may have volunteered to submit to the potential punishments, having signed a contract with the army. He made a choice in that regard.
If you want to be able to make your own decisions (e.g. choose NOT to drop the bomb when ordered) you have to have power to defend against “punishment” or unwanted consequences imposed by others. For a grunt, this might look like physical ability to defend themselves (2nd amendment comes to mind) , or economic independence via a homestead, or something else.
Interesting to think about.
> I think you're forgetting to control for the fact that the former would be severely punished for doing so, and the latter would be severely punished for not doing so? > What if you paid them equally to do the same things?
I think the larger point is that rewarding bombing, or paying bank officers to evict people from their homes is how the superorganism functions. Your counter examples are like saying 'what if fire was cold instead of hot', well then it wouldn't be fire anymore.
I dispute that? There are plenty of e.g. countries that don't bomb others, especially not for "no reason". (!) And the whole point here was about individuals behaving differently when part of the collective, not about the collective having been set up with different incentives and rules than the individuals were in the first place. You can have collectives with better incentives set up and achieve more humane outcomes. Like I said, such examples really exist, they're not hypothetical.
Show me a country that doesn’t bother other countries — ever — and I’ll show you a country that doesn’t have any cards to play. Except for maybe isolated island nations who lack the ability to threaten anyone, all nations come into conflict with others and the only ones that “don’t [initiate aggression with] others” are the ones who lack the ability or who have done the calculation that they’d be severely slapped back if they tried, so they wisely don’t poke the bear(s).
Well said. No organism willingly commits perceived suicide unless it's a viable strategy for its continued existence. The reason a thing exists, is because it hasn't tempted its potential predator.
>>> Nobody rational would kill another person for no reason, but a soldier will bomb a village for the sake of their nation’s geostrategic position.
>> There are plenty of e.g. countries that don't bomb others, especially not for "no reason". (!)
> Show me a country that doesn’t bother other countries — ever
Do you by any chance happen to feel like you may have moved the goalposts by at least a tiny inch?
To use a quote from of those large corporate leaders (Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger):
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome"
It is carrots and sticks all the way down...
There is no human superoganism, and the reason we’re doomed as a temporary species is precisely that humans cannot act eusocially as a superorganism.
By your definition the Moscow Metallica show, Jan 6th riots, etc… were superorganisms and that’s not even barely applicable
Humans expressing group behaviors at some trivial number for a trivial period (<1M people for <2 days is the largest sustained group activity I’m aware of) is the equivalent of a locust swarm not even close to a superorganism