33 KiB
Alicorn | Dogs
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Author: u/traverseda With dread but cautious optimism*
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Score: 51
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Created: 2015-09-14T13:32:13
Post:
Comments:
u/ulyssessword [+18] (10 hours later)
Alicorn is very good at writing stories that horrify me (if taken seriously), but don't use any horror tropes.
u/AmyWarlock [+6] (13 hours later)
The Muse one was amazing
u/ulyssessword [+9] (14 hours later)
This one, Muse, some of Radiance, and maybe Explorers are the ones that I was thinking of. I'm sure that Grownups would qualify for someone else's ideas of what is horrifying.
I should probably get around to reading the rest of the short stories, and maybe the long ones too. I know that there's a selection bias at play, but 7/7 good stories so far should be enough to go off of.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
Why would Grownups be horrifying?
u/ulyssessword [+2] (2 days later)
Missing the singularity.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
Your average "singularity" is something to be avoided.
u/Solonarv [+3] Chaos Legion (2 days later)
For further reference, see also: Accelerando.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (17 hours later)
The way that Muse so sharply touched on an aspect of my own personal experience of the world still causes internal screaming to start up and continue for several minutes after I'm reminded of it.
u/sciolizer [+2] (a day later)
Frick. I should have taken the horror warning more seriously before reading Muse just now.
u/LuminousAlicorn [+4] (2 days later)
Okay, seriously, what should I be putting on that story to Actually Warn people that "horror" isn't doing?
u/sciolizer [+3] (2 days later)
I was off guard only because /u/ulyssessword seemed to be classifying Dogs as horror, and since Dogs didn't bother me at all, I assumed Muse wouldn't either.
Also, I found Muse by looking at the index page, not the stories page, and so I didn't realize that you yourself had designated it horror. I see now that you did not classify Dogs the same way (which I think is appropriate).
Normally I enjoy horror, and doesn't really bother me. But Muse hit me on a very personal level, because I feel on a regular basis.
It was a great story, regardless.
u/None [+1] (22 days later)
Perhaps "NSFL (emotionally disturbing)"? Horror has connoations of ghosts and things which are a completely different type of disturbing.
u/None [+0] (2 days later)
NSFL
u/Bowbreaker [+0] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
I just read it. Holy... seven. That was beautiful.
On a different note, I don't really know why this type of horror needs any kind of special warning. Its not as if it has any potentially adverse effects on health like jump scares do or can easily cause nightmares the way really dark conventional horror can.
u/Nighzmarquls [+12] (2 hours later)
I have some issues with the 'conclusion' that society apparently came too in this story regarding animals.
Makes too strong a precedent towards some unpleasant behavior regarding humans.
u/Chronophilia [+18] sci-fi ≠ futurology (4 hours later)
I can see where they're coming from and how the internal logic of it all works. They make a convincing alien society.
u/Nighzmarquls [+8] (4 hours later)
Oh yeah a convincing one, I have no doubt this could be a functioning and effective society. I just don't see it as one I'd pick over the current one.
It sets a precedent that can just as easily justify rendering the entire human population as we would understand it today extinct.
u/iemfi [+5] (22 hours later)
I think the important thing is that they don't kill any animals though, just stop them from reproducing. And since they are unable to object to that I don't see how it's similar to rendering the entire human population today extinct.
u/Nighzmarquls [+3] (a day later)
that only really works because the animals still have built in death clocks. It does indeed change the formula but if we were mapping this kind of 'kindness' the 'civil' thing to do in this scenario is no longer allow access to body upgrades or immortality serums or uploading unless you submit to certain alterations of your mental architecture so that you can be properly 'aware and capable of performing the necessary actions'.
Letting that particular trend continue with more and more complex and diverse entities of mind means no human ultimately is allowed to exist that even necessarily resembles us because that would be 'too cruel'.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
And maybe, they would be right to do so.
I've gone entire hours without hurting before. It wasn't so bad.
I wouldn't mind being something a bit more robust than human.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (a day later)
But would you rather some one make a version of you that never hurt before in the first place and just put the version of you that remembers that clearly on ice forever?
u/None [+3] (a day later)
Sure. Now there's two of me, one in backup storage in case something happens to the first. You can repeat that process as much as you like.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (a day later)
Fair enough.
u/alexanderwales [+11] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
I don't think the society was terribly sympathetic, but I'd be curious whether they were intended as such.
u/None [+18] (3 hours later)
I think the author was going for the policy with the maximal value of how weird to us it is times how good of an idea it is.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
Oh hell yes, the society that came up with that "final solution" is all kinds of screwed up... but the story is pretty well done.
u/Nighzmarquls [+8] (2 hours later)
gave me a great idea to add to the response list for 'why aliens would conquer earth' though.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+7] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (5 hours later)
Or a "Friendly" AI whose utility function is "reduce suffering". ^^
u/None [+2] (11 hours later)
I am going to find whoever did that. And I am going to rip them limb from limb, and pulverize them into little pieces. And the whole time, the only fucking thing they are going to hear will be: THIS IS FOR LUCKY YOU EVIL SONS OF BITCHES!
Because Lucky had an anxiety disorder her whole life - she was paranoid and sometimes stupid and she would lash out and bite, and my mother believed in dominance hierarchies and that probably just made it worse - and I would have given a whole hell of a lot to be able to just talk to her and find out how to make her ok.
</visceral reaction>
u/LuminousAlicorn [+8] (15 hours later)
If it helps, they wouldn't have wanted to harm Lucky (quite the contrary), just spay her.
u/None [+2] (22 hours later)
We spayed her when she was one year old. Driving her whole species extinct when you've got the biotech to lift them into being speaking citizens because you think a stubbed toe is too much suffering is... twisted.
u/philip1201 [+8] (a day later)
Would you have a moral obligation to uplift bacteria if you could? Or insects, spiders, fish, sharks, hyenas, etc.?
Dogs are probably moral aliens. If we uplift them, they will either live as second class citizens in a universe not built for their CEV, or we waste entire galaxies, containing quadrillions of human life-years worth of resources, on stupid, wasteful dog projects.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+4] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 days later)
I'd start with uplifting humans.
I'd want to uplift dogs as part of that process, because I suspect we can benefit from bringing dog sensibilities into our social structures. The wild animals most like us, outside of the primates, are probably wolves, and dogs are are already partway between wolves and humans.
The end point of the uplift process is going to be a pan-terrestrial species, some of whom are descended from humans, others from dogs, others from otters and dolphins and bonobos and hyenas and who knows... whose lives and inheritance are mediated through silicon (or some descendant computational substrate) as much as carbon, by data as much as DNA. Throwing out those viewpoints the way the society in this story did is self-destructive.
u/philip1201 [+4] (2 days later)
And then it turns out dogs prefer the glory of the pack over the happiness of the individual or the species in their CEV, and you have to either commit genocide on them, deny them their truest desires for the entire future of their race, or watch them fight and hurt one another for the entire future of both your races.
Look, if dogs have anything to teach us that we would consider good, it's part of our CEV even if they never existed. We don't need to uplift them to learn from them, they don't even need to have existed for us to learn what we would have learned from them, if we're doing our jobs properly in figuring out the CEV.
So no, their extinction of all animal life on Earth is no more self-destructive than not reading Arabic scholars' works on physics. If you're actually trying to succeed, you can easily surpass their efforts by directing your attention elsewhere.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 days later)
And then it turns out dogs prefer the glory of the pack over the happiness of the individual or the species in their CEV
That is an unlikely outcome. Hell, you can't find that consistent a goal set even among humans. Are you suggesting that we should work towards that kind of uniformity? That's kind of creepy, to be honest.
Also, that kind of reasoning leads to conclusions like "we have to eliminate all alien life forms just in case they value our destruction".
Not to mention killing AI researchers, just in case.
Look, if dogs have anything to teach us that we would consider good, it's part of our CEV even if they never existed.
You've completely lost me here.
u/philip1201 [+2] (2 days later)
Look, if dogs have anything to teach us that we would consider good, it's part of our CEV even if they never existed.
You've completely lost me here.
I'm confused how I can lose you there, of all places. It's pretty much the definition of CEV. If there is something good we could have learned along the way, it's part of our CEV. Note the "could have": if you actually need to have the things around in order to learn from them, you can't calculate the CEV because there's good advice which doesn't happen to be personified on Earth. If [] have admirable traits which we should want to include in the future, we should include those traits in the future regardless of whether [] is a species which actually exists.
That is an unlikely outcome.
It's an example. Are you trying to be difficult?
Hell, you can't find that consistent a goal set even among humans.
CEV. Show a fascist that the best world is one without nations everywhere (assuming this is indeed the case), and I would expect them to acquiesce.
Are you suggesting that we should work towards that kind of uniformity?
Overeager reductionism. Just because all atoms are part of one computer, doesn't mean that all atoms are identical, in spite of having the property "part of computer". Human preferences not being uniform or otherwise heavily externally optimised appears to be part of the CEV.
But sure, let's run with that, suppose dogs wanted everyone to be morally uniform. Wouldn't that be horrible to make part of the Terran future? Shouldn't we just ignore them and let everyone be free? Wouldn't that dissatisfy the dogs, because those damn humans are wasting their resources on individuality and a tolerance for moral error? Wouldn't we be sad that the dogs were dissatisfied, given our capacity for empathy? Wouldn't this be a strictly worse world than one where the dogs (sapient and modified or just modified or neither) are happy, we are happy, and there never was a conflict of interest between sapient creatures because we didn't blindly upload an alien species or force a living creature to change its morality.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+0] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 days later)
Got it. You believe in magic and the immutability of humanity, and you're basing your reasoning on the inevitability of low probability events.
u/philip1201 [+1] (3 days later)
Do you think I've been unreasonable, or just stupid/insane/incomprehensible?
If the former, I'm sorry, and could you please explain how. If the latter, I hope I'll see you around someday, because right now, I'm not up for this shit.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 days later)
I think you're working with axioms that are fundamentally different from mine. For example, I see the Less Wrong terminology and techniques as a potentially useful tool, but they're not axioms for me. You seem to accept them as solid as bedrock. The way you're talking about CEV you might as well be saying "Manifest Destiny" or talking about Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.
u/philip1201 [+1] (3 days later)
> The Year of Bayes, 314
> Using axioms rather than priors
I can't help it if you misinterpret my usage of CEV in accordance to the one and only commonly used definition of the phrase. Calling your misinterpretation axiomatically correct for yourself and then insulting me for using the common definition doesn't exactly help resolve the conflict either.
Stripping "CEV" out of my claim, I am saying that we don't need actual dogs, especially not sapient dogs, to determine what dogs would want to do, by the time we have the power to uplift species (=> we can design sapient brain architecture which preserves simpler species' values => we can make a friendly (?) artificial superintelligence). If any part of their morality seems like a better idea than what we had come up with, we can adopt it without actually needing to listen to them because we can simulate them or find more simplified algorithms for searching morality space.
If the result of all that processing is that the world is best off with all species merging into one, then we should do that, but for now, with my limited knowledge and Occam's razor and limited imagination, I'll just say what I can say: not bloody likely.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 days later)
If there is something good we could have learned along the way, it's part of our CEV.
The very link that you pointed me to contradicts that. There's no proof that CEV converges. The path we take is certain to change what it converges into even if it does converge. Taking irreversible actions (like exterminating a species) are definitely going to change it.
by the time we have the power to uplift species (=> we can design sapient brain architecture which preserves simpler species' values => we can make a friendly (?) artificial superintelligence).
Neither of those are implied by "the power to uplift a species".
If the result of all that processing is that the world is best off with all species merging into one
Not what I suggested.
u/philip1201 [+1] (3 days later)
The very link you posted contradicts that.
I'm calling this as within the fuzziness of language. Replace 'good' with '(identifiably) better', and it works.
Taking irreversible actions (like exterminating a species) ...
> implying it's irreversible
> implying I support their extermination
... are definitely going to change it.
Other than low-level fuss (people liking a dog or not liking any, people knowing they like dogs or not knowing it), I don't see how.
Neither of those are [sic] implied by "the power to uplift a species"
Yuh-uh. How else would you uplift a dog? Graft chunks of a human brain into it? Maybe that would work - biology is remarkably persistent - but I would hardly call it a dog at that point.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (4 days later)
Replace 'good' with '(identifiably) better', and it works.
You can replace "good" with "potentially interesting" or any other words, and it still doesn't work. If it's something we "could have learned" on the way, but we took a path that prevented us from learning it, it's not going to happen.
> implying I support their extermination
Not implied. We are talking about a story in which that happened. I am objecting to the society in which that happened. You are objecting to my objection. It doesn't matter if you're doing it because you approve of the society or because you think my argument is wrong on any other grounds... I am not attacking you, I am supporting my argument.
Other than low-level fuss (people liking a dog or not liking any, people knowing they like dogs or not knowing it)
That's kind of a big thing.
How else would you uplift a dog? Graft chunks of a human brain into it?
That's one of the more commonly proposed techniques, yes (albeit usually expressed less crudely). There's a lot of common mammalian biology that might make that possible.
I would hardly call it a dog at that point.
How about a human with biological or cybernetic enhancements. Would you call that human any more?
u/philip1201 [+1] (4 days later)
but [if] we took a path that prevented us from learning it
Not uplifting all dogs doesn't do that. Even killing all dogs doesn't do that. Destroying all information about dogs might do that, but it seems unlikely because there is such a flood of information in the natural world that it's probably redundant somewhere. Destroying all information about all non-human life might be sufficient.
To put it more clearly: all information to make the perfect ethical strategy/CEV (according to you) is contained within you. For all combinations of the state of knowledge and the possible choice, the you can already select the best possible option (according to you) using nothing but your brain.
The non-existence of dogs may change the state of your knowledge and therefore your actions and possibly even your believed moral statements, but the CEV operates under the assumption of perfect knowledge, and I don't know of any evidence of value drift that fundamental in human history. Meanwhile, attaining sufficiently detailed information about dogs to reconstruct them still seems likely in case of a well-meaning xenocide, and an obvious certainty if they are merely not uplifted before we get fAI, which obsoletes our moral knowledge.
I am objecting to the society in which that happened. You are objecting to my objection.
Objectively false. Check the comment history.
I am supporting my argument.
In that case you're guilty of a false dichotomy. The fact that irreversible actions (unlike exterminating a species, which can be reverted with a little 21st century bio-engineering and a full DNA sample) limit future choices has no impact on whether we should take the positive action of uplifting dogs, which you're arguing for.
Other than low-level fuss (people liking a dog or not liking any, people knowing they like dogs or not knowing it)
That's kind of a big thing.
Neither destroys information for the CEV. They are indeed big, but they are just elements of a xenocide, not a permanent darkening of the future. People can learn to like dogs again and find dogs to like, if killing them was a mistake.
How about a human with biological or cybernetic enhancements. Would you call that human any more?
If they replace or supplant the seat of conscious reasoning, identity, and abstract (including moral) thought, i.e. the frontal cortex, without preserving its contents, I would not.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+0] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (4 days later)
To put it more clearly: all information to make the perfect ethical strategy/CEV (according to you) is contained within you. For all combinations of the state of knowledge and the possible choice, the you can already select the best possible option (according to you) using nothing but your brain.
This is the bit where I go "you believe in magic".
If they replace or supplant the seat of conscious reasoning, identity, and abstract (including moral) thought, i.e. the frontal cortex, without preserving its contents, I would not.
Language is probably not in the frontal cortex. Damage to Broca's or Wernicke's area has more of an impact on linguistic abilities than damage to the frontal cortex.
u/philip1201 [+1] (5 days later)
This is the bit where I go "you believe in magic".
And that is a dumb attitude. You're not giving any information other than your incredulity and possibly your insecurity about your ignorance.
For the record, it's simple reductionism. People can act like independent moral entities - they don't need to talk to people to come to a judgment - so they contain a complete set of moral processing. Everything else they receive as information from the environment, which is part of 'knowledge'. Humans run on physics, so the moral processing is complete, between knowledge and the brain that processes it.
If you believe you don't know the answer, you will make a decision in ignorance, potentially to refer to a (real) friend for guidance. The problem where you remember your friend's answer is a separate one with a different state of knowledge, with a different resulting choice. The problem where you remember trying to contact your friend, but having them not be available, is another one. You may also want to include dogs in your decision, which results in strategies of trying to probe dogs, and then strategies where you know the dogs' minds, which are therefore occasionally different than if you didn't know the dogs' minds.
Language is probably not in the frontal cortex.
Good thing I didn't mention language, then.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
Dogs are probably moral aliens.
You're joking, right? Wolves might be somewhat alien to us, even though they actually are social mammals, which is already pretty close on a universal scale. Dogs were bred, trained, and bred again to conform to our social expectations of them.
If we uplift them, they will either live as second class citizens in a universe not built for their CEV, or we waste entire galaxies, containing quadrillions of human life-years worth of resources, on stupid, wasteful dog projects.
This view of even morality itself as a fundamentally alienating and oppositional project is a major flaw in CEV. Dogs easily form part of the social community of humanity and which humanity cares about, so there's basically no cost to integrate them.
u/philip1201 [+3] (a day later)
FWIW, I would be more comfortable with baseline dogs, especially if we're assigning massive amounts of resources to each person. They can be engineered not to suffer needlessly, and otherwise optimised, but I don't know if dogs want to be smarter^1 , or even if they did, if the consequences of satisfying that desire (redistribution of resources to honour their wishes, potential moral incapability, etc.) would make the decision a net positive. Meanwhile, a reasonably happy and non-suffering pet seems like a very good use of resources, especially in meatspace where they cost less than a static house.
Meanwhile, would an uplifted dog be what you want for yourself? Keeping their subservience through the uplifting process makes me uncomfortable, but without it would they want to play fetch, learn tricks, shower you with affection, etc.? It seems to me that a large part of the reason of having dogs rather than more/slightly wealthier humans is lost when uplifting them.
You're joking ... Of them.
It's ridiculously unlikely a priori, and while I agree that your arguments constitute evidence, I don't think it's enough. House elves, shpexish obsession with territory or hierarchy, or other failure modes may still exist.
This view of ... flaw in CEV.
True moral disagreement seems to me to be the most fundamental possible disagreement on distribution of resources. Let go of that, and what basis do we have to do anything the way we like?
Dogs easily ... integrate them.
Probably agreed without uploading (see above), but with uploading I doubt they'll fill their former niche.
[1] Hard to prove, not my true rejection.
u/None [+5] (a day later)
I don't think any of the real suffering reducers advocate stubbed toe type utilitarianism. Brian Tomasik is one of the prominent suffering reducers and leaning towards negative utilitarianism and he mainly argues that negative utilitarianism is justified in the case of extreme suffering like getting fried to death in brazen bull. That type of suffering might be so bad that it would be better to not have been born and it would require very large amount of happy experiences to outweigh it.
There's at least one threshold of suffering (and maybe more) such that if someone suffers more intensely than that threshold, that suffering is lexigally worse than any amount of suffering less intense than the threshold.
http://reducing-suffering.org/three-types-of-negative-utilitarianism/
u/None [+2] (a day later)
In all seriousness, how does masochism play into that model? Wouldn't the ideal solution to the problem be to redefine it by making everyone a masochist?
u/Solonarv [+2] Chaos Legion (2 days later)
redefine it by making everyone a masochist
I don't dare say much more than that altering preferences is SPIDERS.
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
I really can't say anything else except I'd rather not exist than be a a tortured masochist.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
Driving her whole species extinct when you've got the biotech to lift them into being speaking citizens
Yeh, that's the other thing that bugged me about the story. They can remap a human's brain into a parrot, but they can't uplift dogs so they can talk to you.
u/LuminousAlicorn [+4] (a day later)
I considered a variant on the story where they could manage uplifting, but in the version I published, they actually can't.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+7] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
I think it's better that it's left unmentioned. I don't have to like the puritanical asshats for it to be a good story. I should have said "that's the other thing that bugged me about the society". My headcanon is that they could but choose not to for the same reason we still have the war on drugs and the war on science and all the other horse exhaust that simply wouldn't be there if a fraction of the people with decision making ability were even vaguely sane.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (43 minutes later)
Well played.
u/traverseda [+2] With dread but cautious optimism (an hour later)
Am I missing context?
u/ArgentStonecutter [+6] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
I just like how the realization sneaks up on you. I caught on before the narrative made it explicit, but it was still a great "aha" moment. And I don't want to make a more detailed response because spoilers.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+4] Mouse Army (a day later)
Really? Spoiler
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
Really? "I can name that plot in FOUR letters!"?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+3] Mouse Army (a day later)
Sorry, that should not have come of as harsh. Typical mind fallacy etc.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
Well, I pretty much thought it would go that way from when the protagonists assumed the dogs were actors. But yeah, title alone may be a bit too far. It could have just as easily been some horror story about uplifted dogs or some such.
u/traverseda [+2] With dread but cautious optimism (an hour later)
Ahh
u/None [+7] (18 hours later)
[deleted]
u/traverseda [+2] With dread but cautious optimism (a day later)
Yeah, I got that. I just didn't find it very... subtle, so what exactly was well played was a bit of a mystery.
u/Gurkenglas [+1] (2 hours later)
Meh, I realized it on the fourth paragraph.
u/alexanderwales [+24] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
I don't think that this particular story is encapsulated in the twist. There are some stories that are, ones where the twist is meant to be the entire thrust of it, but this was more a story about cultural norms, pain and suffering in animals, and the question of whether it's ethical to keep pets.
u/darkflagrance [+10] (4 hours later)
Agreed; the bigger twist is really what society does to people who violate those norms. The sense of horror comes in when the story describes how harshly they punish people we consider normal.
u/Chronophilia [+11] sci-fi ≠ futurology (6 hours later)
What did you think "the twist" was? It was all but stated that the dogs were real dogs, and that revelation read like it was meant to be the shocking twist. But I was more surprised by the revelation that the "Extinction" was deliberate.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
The "dogs are real dogs" and the "there are no real dogs" twists weren't the twist. There's lots of SFnal backgrounds where coming across real dogs would be surprising (Niven's "Svetz" stories, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, some of Asimov's futures) without it being due to a bunch of idiot negative utility freaks with no imagination.
u/gabbalis [+4] (3 hours later)
Second sentence. And only that long because you need that the default of the setting is . (We already knew from the start with high confidence that it is not precisely our world because it is by Alicorn.)
I mean it wasn't certain by then but the thing is named 'Dogs', though I suppose I may just be innately biased towards that sort of twist and just happened to be correct in this case.