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If you don't have children and want to become a transhumanist immortal being, you shouldn't trust me (hypothetically. In reality, I have no power or agency and wouldn't make enemies over something I can't control).
Self-serving? of course! So are all of your positions. Look I like liberal democracy. but I like it because it serves the world well, myself and my family included. The point at which it doesn't I don't have to religiously hold libertarian values.
Unprincipled? Absolutely not. This is a bullshit attack. My principles are based on values you disagree with, My positions which extend from my principles may be extrapolating on faulty data or predictive ability, but they exist. My principles are primarily toward the flourishing of my children and the of the existing human race. I think people with kids also have some extra buy in there. People without kids who want to appeal to democratic ideals, then use that to gamble the future of those with kids are less allied to my worldview.
Now I also have some WEIRD lifestyle preservation impulse. Because I do not come from Russia like you or India like selfmade, I am less inclined to rock the boat of my 'good life'. However, it is my Christian belief that lets me know that this particular self-interest is not morally acceptable past a very limited point. If you told me I could push a button that would preserve my lifestyle but keep the third world in poverty, part of me might like to, but I would not. Is that self-interest somewhat laundered through the 'altruistic' interest of my children. Yeah, and admittedly it becomes dicier there. But your interest in democratic ideals is likewise laundering of your own self-interest as well.
You and ChrisPratt both took the "cheeky" line too literally. I do not actually advocate a policy where only people with children get a stake.
Much more seriously, I am noting that Elon Musk's perceptions and goals about humanity are more readily parsable and agreeable to my POV than a childless technologist. Elon Musk has expressed a lot of views about human concern that I, (perhaps wrongly!) recognize as informed by the worldview of a parent, and that is a comfort against the rhetoric I find coming from a lot of other people. I said in my post that it could even be a product of my own bias, extrapolating too far gets what I called a "cheeky" heuristic, not an actual governance suggestion.
That folks without kids are so immediately hostile to the idea that folks with kids want to put the interest of their kids forward, is one of the biggest redpills against the techno-liberal worldview. I used to find the common argument is such circles that "think of he children is an emotive backdoor to authoritarianism", until I had chidren to think of. That doesn't mean I am an infinite safteyist. But it means I can recognize and reciprocate when other leaders are clearly thinking of the children.
Which I won't, but more due to your rabid tribalism and clear bad faith than these differences. I'll note that I've always wanted to and still hope to have a large traditional family besides living forever as an uplifted human (the question of whether this, combined with my values and probable tolerance for further self-alteration, would initiate a slide into profound non-humanity and disconnect has concerned me since, like, age 6), but that's neither here nor there.
No. If you admit this, you concede that your arguments about «stake» are disingenuous. I do not have to concede anything of this sort.
I also don't worship democracy. The point of my comment about democracy is that there is no agreeable external standard of a «good vision». Everything resolves either with a negotiated consensus or with a power competition that ends in more or less disagreeable and unequal compromises. We don't have power struggles here, so you've got to argue why your offer is better even by the standards of others. Perhaps you can address their higher-order values, showing why your standards allow for those to be satisfied better. Maybe you can offer some concession. Doubling down on asserting that your stuff is gooder and you are gooder is not productive.
Most irritatingly, there's a clever bait and switch with definitions of stake you use.
Here, you claim that your vision advances the common good simply because it is… good. Also aligned with people you agree with and whose satisfaction is more important by your account. So it's a «stake» not in a future where humanity thrives, but in the particular future with a version of thriving you prefer for your internal reasons, in a word – a preference. Okay. Naturally everyone thinks his preferred values are the best, else he'd have abandoned them. But this is just circular. This isn't a serious attempt to persuade: you ask that your collective values be respected (and in practice, you clearly hope to preclude the realization of other values), and if your numbers are sufficient, you demand that they be given supremacy. (You also clearly desire incompatibility – with the presumption your party will come out on top and snuff out others – because you find other visions morally abhorrent, a negative irrespective of contingent factors; you have a stake not simply in the future where baseline humans can peacefully exist, but where others cannot. But that's okay too. Most people this serious about religion are genocidal in their heart of hearts, I think, and for the most part they can behave themselves).
However, in your original comment, you did try to persuade. You argued that your political preferences, and those of other parents, are inherently more deserving of trust because your values and traits, chiefly having children (and wanting yourself and them to die, for whatever reason), give you «a stake» in the common long-term flourishing of humanity: according to this logic, you have skin in the game and it gives you an incentive to make more responsible choices than others, in this context, apparently wrt AI progress. This is how I understand e.g. the following.
I counter that this is bad psychology. Why would Altman (or me, or selfmadehuman, or even fruitier types in my list above) have less of a subjective stake? If he personally intends to be present indefinitely, he totally has a massive stake; we aren't debating whether his plan will work out but simply whether his idea of his stake in the future motivates him to act responsibly to effect less risky outcomes for the common good, in this case lesser odds of a rogue AI wiping out humanity like Eliezer fears (it sounds improbable that a misaligned AI would wipe out everyone but Altman; I'll leave the topic of Altman-aligned omnicidal singleton aside, though it is important in its own right).
Perhaps your brain is overloaded with oxytocine and so you feel that, since Altman doesn't have children like you do, he cannot act seriously: children are obviously (to you) the most valuable existence in the world, more important to you than you are, and Altman is not tethered to anything as important. I can easily believe that Altman cares more about his livelihood than you do about your entire family combined, and thus has a greater «stake». In any case, this is just psychological speculation about the magnitude of perceived value from humanity not getting whacked. I cannot look into your head any more than I can look into Altman's. I could also argue that Christians cannot be serious consequentialists, nor give much of a shit about preventing Apocalypse ≈indefinitely, and their stake is phony since the whole premise of their faith is eternal blissful immortality conditional on faithfulness to some deontological rules; so even Altman with his assumed materialistic egoism is more reliable. I won't, because this is an entirely worthless line of debate.
Can you appreciate the difference and why equivocation between those senses of the stake would irritate?
More mundanely, the society simply respects parents because through their procreation it perpetuates itself (also because this signals some baseline competence, under non-dysgenic conditions at least); and parents are hardwired to egoistically demand a greater share of the common pie – a greater stake, one could say – on behalf of their progeny, cowardly submit to any intimidation when that seems to protect their children, psychotically denigrate, belittle and rip off childless people (who end up feeling irrational shame) and do other silly things. This might be necessary for the system to work and, in fact, I've recommended doubling down on such uncouth behaviors.
Personally I am constitutionally incapable of feeling shame for being correct, though.
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What do you think about encryption backdoors or bans based on "protecting children"?
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