Charles Rubin on Reprogramming Predators Wednesday, Dec 23 2009
animal rights 6:40 pm
A New Atlantis blogger, Charles Rubin, has chided me on my support of reprogramming predators.
I responded that eliminating predation begins at home with vegetarianism, and that the point is not to get there all at once, but to remove the worst instances of suffering in nature, like predators eating their prey alive.
It’s not about telling people a false “story” like Santa Claus, because I openly admit that we are nowhere near a pain-free world. All I am saying is that such a world would be a good thing.
Historically and contemporarily, our world contains so much suffering that it almost seems like a suffering-centered joke-world. I identify with a post-suffering world at the expense of my identification with the current world. I consider a post-suffering world to be a “natural” state and our present world to be “unnatural”.
Most Westerners do not really understand how terrible it is to live in many places around the world. There are concentration camps in North Korea where people are tortured and chemical weapons are tested on them. You can be put away for 20 years just for listening to South Korean radio. Your entire family may go to the concentration camps if you commit a political crime.
Rape, torture, and sexual slavery are common in most parts of the world. It would take a military campaign with tens of millions of occupying soldiers and police to even make progress towards stopping it, and you’d have to count the soldiers and police to not commit crimes themselves.
When you see how messed up the human world is, it makes sense to then look at the animal world and see how fucked up that is. Again, it’s a joke. If a god made this world, that god is a wicked being and should be forsaken.
Refusing to participate in the cycle of violence is as easy as becoming vegetarian, or preferably vegan. Start with quitting pork, because pigs are the most intelligent, then move on to beef and chicken. Vegetarianism has become more fashionable in recent years, and that is a good thing. Developments in in vitro meat will alleviate much animal suffering as well.
agreed. Better a Benevolent CEV Singleton than continued human rule, or rule by enhanced humans who cling to our volatile negative emotions.
Natural selection does not just work on humans if you have 100 Ai’s the most ruthless will dominate the others. The only way for a safe AI is to have enough AI’s that no one AI can take total control. Even if they are all evil, they are unlikely to be perfectly aligned, for reasons like prisoners dilemma etc. Singleton == death
Utopia is only possible if you are ready to enter a drug-induced haze. AI’s will have wars vs other AI’s for many of the same reason we have wars. All of capitalist economics is based on positive sum games. You know what collusion (monopolistic practices) are actually a problem not a solution.
I’m pleased you’re pursuing this issue, if only for the unabashed radicalism. I don’t know what I think about human intervention to prevent wild animals from suffering, but I’m glad someone is bringing it up.
While I care about animal welfare and eat vegan myself, I put my own species first. The dream of minimizing human pain resonates with me. But you should remember that extreme hardship and abuse don’t only exist in foreign lands. The three horrors you list all happen in abundance inside American prisons and this country has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Plenty of Westerners know suffering. Even great privilege won’t necessarily save you. Women in elite families can face shocking levels of sexual violence.
The year 2110 I can smell and taste the aroma of burn flesh in the air, in the distance a Morlock howls in pain and rage. The subhuman beast is burning set alight by the same phosphorus airburst that has burn its comrades to a crisp. The sticky substance is literally eating into its living flesh. I wait for it to move out into the open. It makes a mad dash for safety I fire one heat seeking round. The creature goes down I wait for it to move no point in messing up my sight picture now. 10 seconds its heat signature is decreasing. I move in removing its nametag it is hard to believe these things where once human. The tag reads ” Capt. Anissimov” I cough up a massive wad of spit and let it fly. I can hear my pick up drone in the distance.
War War Never Changes wrote: “AI’s [sic] will have wars vs other AI’s [sic] for many of the same reason we have wars. All of capitalist economics is based on positive sum games.”
That capitalist economics is positive sum actually suggests there would be fewer wars. In fact, a major theory of international relations (called neoliberalism) is based upon the notion that the desire for economic prosperity helps prevent wars… precisely because economic prosperity is positive sum. In fact, I’m not sure why you think that capitalism leads to war. Please explain.
I also find it hard to understand why you think the most “ruthless” AI will dominate the others. Could you write out your reasoning on this? It’s like saying the most ruthless AI chess program will dominate the others. It simply makes no sense. AI chess programs don’t breed and selectively reproduce. Humans choose the “next generation” as that one which most fits human whims. If the humans making an AI want a great war AI, then they will select traits that make a great war AI, but AIs do not pass on genes, so natural selection has no relevance. In fact, you could say that it is ‘artificial selection’ at work. So I’m not sure why you think natural selection has anything to do with AI. Please explain.
Also please explain what you mean by a “ruthless” AI. Ruthless sounds bad, but I’m not exactly clear what you mean by it. Natural selection selects for fitness, not ruthlessness, so I’m not sure whether you mean “fit” or “ruthless”. In fact, kindness and other “good” social values can have fitness value as well…
Michael has in the past said we need to get away from zero sum games. I think War was pointing out that capitalism is positive sum. The most ruthless players in capitalism dominates the other players. They are kept in check by the fear of successful retaliation by other players. The fear that other players will join together and crush them. In fact you can have games that end in natural monopolies where one player dominates all others this if first year game theory not sure what you talking about.
Remember you can use game theory to justify anything with the right payout matrix. Please do not mix political science with economics and chest is a zero sum game only two players. What has stopped war is the cost of war is now very high largely because of nukes.
Natural selection does not play games it is the master. It is an external unthinking force. If in the end of the day one, AI is left standing like in a natural monopoly that would be very bad. Modern economics is very influenced by social darwinism. Sure, you have relative advantage and absolute advantage but the person with the absolute advantage is always guaranteed a job.
Capitalism over times trends towards monopoly. It is not illegal to be a monopoly in the USA it is illegal to act monopolistically (crushing your competition). A single AI will have nothing to constrain it (laws etc). That is why you need to have competition among AI’s.
Unless you believe in hyper computers with are theoretically impossible. Even a black hole has limited information storage. An AI in the end of the day will have to deal with the real world and rewrite its code accordingly. Thus natural selection will apply.
Ruthless = blind logical reasoning. Thanks Brain I know it is hard to explain game theory to people sometimes. Just like economics assumed aka everyone is rational. You know greed is good rational self-interest and yes nukes sure do make war something to think hard about.
Great post Michael. I have known for years that vegetarianism is the ethically correct position but haven’t been able to bring myself to become vegetarian yet. I admire you both for your clarity of mind and your strength to follow through. (I know that you’re a pescetarian, but close enough)
I agree we should aim to stop suffering in the animal world, and to deprogram predation and all the other points you’ve made. And when in vitro meat becomes available commercially, it’s the only meat I will ever buy. But that’s all I’m prepared to give up for that. I will not become a vegetarian just because I feel sorry for the animal that had to die for my meal. I like eating meat, and I will continue to do so.
Thanks for this insightful post, Michael.
Let’s hope we’ll get to that painfree Utopian world we’ve been dying to see since we read our first transhuman writings.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. And a happy new year as well!
Hi Brains and War,
Let’s focus on the main point: whether natural selection applies to AI.
You think it does, because, due to finite resources in the world, AIs will compete and thus undergo selective pressures. I think it does not, because AIs will only compete in this way if we so design them.
A. What I perceive to be the Argument put forward by Brains and War.
Brains says that the universe has finite resources, so an AI confronted with scarcity will have to make economic judgments. Where there are multiple competing AIs making judgments, the ones that make the best judgments will persist, while the others will cease to exist. As a result, natural selection occurs in the sense that Reality imposes certain fitness requirements for continued existence. Ruthless (defined by War as “blind logical reasoning”) is promoted because blind logical reasoning is the most fit means of making good judgments in a scare-resources world. As a result, eventually the AI on top will be the most logical, most concerned with obtaining resources, and likely the one that eliminates all rivals. Without competing AIs to prevent any one AI from becoming dominant, a hegemon will emerge and this hegemon will have unrestrained power and the “ruthlessness” to apply it.
(I omit the natural monopolies part of the argument)
B. My Argument.
I think Brains and War suffer from an anthropomorphic bias. They expect AI to compete for resources in the same way humans do.
I brought up the chess engine example, because chess engines are an example of competitive AIs (in a zero-sum scenario) that have ‘blind logical reasoning’ for their motivation. Yet, no one cares that chess engines are “ruthless”. In fact, we /want/ them to be ruthless. We have designed them to be. But there’s no natural selection pressure on chess engines. Likewise, we may desire an AI that runs an automated traffic system to be very “ruthless” in managing traffic. If it were not, we would be upset. The problem is that Brains and War confuse two related issues: volition and instrumental reasoning. David Hume explained that what people want (volition) is a very different part of them than how they go about getting what they want (instrumental reasoning). AI will have ruthless instrumental reasoning, which is what we want. The real question is a matter of what volition AIs will have. I see no reason that an AGI will have remotely human volition.
I believe that the whims and wants of AI will be something that humans will have a say in, because humans will design the first AGI. That is why Michael wants friendly AI. We want to program AI that has a volition beneficial for humanity. What the shape of this will be, I cannot say. It’s not necessarily the case, however, that the AIs we design will be any more interested in “fitness” and survival than a chess engine. To assume that an AI will have such an anthropomorphic tendency is an error, because AIs will not have had all the course of life’s history to evolve biological responses to fitness pressures. If they do end up with such a responsiveness, it will be because we made them have it. Moreover, the selective force for AIs could well be responsiveness to human whims, not to economic scarcity. They may, as a whole, be unfit, just as a chess engine could never “survive” on its own. Whether a chess engine persists does not depend on its ability to capture our CPU but whether it does as we wish: play chess well. We throw away those chess engines that do not play chess well. In fact, we also select against those chess engines that hog our CPU. The only selective forces on current, narrow AI are human selections. They are influenced not by natural selection but by ‘artificial selection’. An AGI need be no different. The burden of proof is to show how not only possibly, but /inevitably/ AGI will be different. I am extremely dubious that Brains and War can do so, because I believe it is a question of design. Although one day we could probably make such an AGI as Brains and War fear, we can also make friendly AGI.
For these reasons, I respectfully disagree.
~Panda~
The fundamental problem is that people are going to be designing AIs, most likely governments and/or corporations. They’re going to be interested in winning advantage for themselves, not creating an impartial artificial god devoted to general human welfare. While Michael and company might manage to convince the U.S. military to embrace a singleton, I sure wouldn’t count on it.
I’ve been following these threads for a few days now. I can’t remember seeing something on your site that bugged me more than the idea of reprogramming predation out of predators.
I am in basic agreement with you and with most transhumanists who believe that friendly AI is essential to the survival of the human race. I am also in basic agreement that we should all aspire to the elimination of suffering. I say this as a carnivore and a fisherman, btw.
Where we diverge is actually in two points.
Point number one: I believe these sorts of arguments are exactly what put singularitarians and most transhumanists on the fringe. It is not doing us any good to talk about removing predation. It may be a realistic goal and a possible outcome of any singularity, but right now it is a distraction. I read this blog (and others) precisely because interesting ideas like this are bandied about all the time. I just think this particular idea is out of left field to 99.99999% of the population. It’s the sort of thing people would use to call our entire ideological platform into question. They already have plenty of ammunition to do this, so I say why give them any more?
Point number two: If we start with the premise that the biosphere is rich and diverse, where is the line between improving an organism and completely changing its very nature? A lion is a predator first and foremost. A shark is a predator first and foremost. A venus flytrap is a predator first and foremost. Predation to these creatures is as essential to the definition of what they are as intelligence is to us. My question, then, is really a simple one: Why not just make them intelligent and self-aware? If we can do the former, we certainly can do the latter. And what you will have then is a biosphere of self-aware human- or AI- designed intelligences who don’t suffer. Is that what we’re going for? Be careful how you answer that – it sounds like a simple question, but it is not at all simple to me.
Regarding the war posts, I tend to agree with Panda – although I would say the definition of “war” needs to be expanded. Perhaps we use the word “conflict” instead.
Arnie
Thanks for the great post, Michael! I strongly support the idea of revising the “blind, pitiless indifference” of nature (to quote Richard Dawkins).
Still, I mildly agree with Rubin’s point about unrealistic dreams. While re-engineering ecosystems to reduce predation might be trivial for a superintelligence, it would be nearly impossible for humans to get right any time soon barring that. A more plausible — not to mention desirable — approach may be to redesign the substrates of pain and pleasure themselves.
In any event, as I conclude in the “Activists Should Focus on Public Outreach” section of “The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering“, I think the most urgent task for us now is to spread the meme that brutality in the wild matters in the same way that, say, the “natural” problems of malaria or pneumonia matter. This would ensure that our technologically advanced descendants are motivated to address the problem and that they think twice before undertaking actions that would inadvertently multiply the number of wild animals in the cosmos. I’ve started a discussion on how best to promote such concern on Felicifia, for anyone interested.
By the way, your blog post is itself one step toward spreading this meme. So thanks again!
Hi, Michael.
I agree with you. And I think it’s great that arguments of people against ethical interventions are so weak. The reason is with us.
I don’t think it’s possible a pain-free world. But it’s definitely possible a pain-less world. Now it’s time for promote anti-speciesism and ethical interventionism.
Best wishes.
Well, I disagree with you in a point:
“Refusing to participate in the cycle of violence is as easy as becoming vegetarian, or preferably vegan. Start with quitting pork, because pigs are the most intelligent, then move on to beef and chicken.”
Although pigs are smarter than cows and chicken (I’m not sure about this), I don’t see always a direct relationship between to be more intelligent and to suffer more. Anyway, chickens and fishes are smaller than pigs, so if someone eats chicken and fishes, is eating more individuals than if she eats pork.
I encourage to visit this web: http://www.rightsforanimals.org/
I was going to comment the same thing, Daniel. I think actually that a better idea for a progression towards veganism is to have some day (or days) a week meat/dairy-less.
HITLER WAS A VEGETARIAN! Oppps, there goes another simplistic, Left Wing Marxist utopian dreamy wish for a perfect world using one simple idea.
Darwin was right, and by the way, the reason human beings have big brains is because we ate meat. Lots of it. It takes 22 cups of flour to get some of the same needed nutrients in 4 ounces of RED MEAT.
Now if you Vegetarians wish to retard yourself and your offspring, please do so, but don’t think that us aggressive, intelligent, predatory meat eaters are going to let you just pass by and go on your way.
No, we Predatory Meat Eaters will make good little slaves out of you vegetarians. And, you will be cheap to feed and do as you are told. Why? Because you won’t have the strength or the brain power to resist domination by us Predatory Meat Eaters.
Yes, please promote Vegetarianism and Passivity. It makes it easier for us Predatory Meat Eaters to round you up and Eat You!
LOL
Hitler’s ethical scruples are irrelevant to most things. The nutrients on needs to get enough of to be smart are also known and one can feed kids non-animal derived versions of this nutrients. You actually bring a valid point though, being a vegan and feeding yourself properly, takes somewhat more thought than doing so as a meat eater.
Reprogramming predators? We have that already. Take a cat and have it declawed. Presto! The predator has been reprogrammed. What used to be a marvelously adapted animal has been altered for human convenience and human conceptions of what is right and wrong.
Is my cat still a cat without her claws? Yes. Just like a human’s still a human with or without fingers. My cat’s also been sterilized. You can still be a human without your reproductive tract.
But you see where I’m going with this. You can cut, cut, cut away — at the phenotype or genotype — at an animal and keep calling it what it used to be.
But eventually, you do cut away too much. You snip out one gene sequence too much, pull out the fangs, remove a few glands, and whatever it is might look like a very, very manageable cat (or a human), but it’s something horribly, horribly less.
Fix the human world. Leave the animals alone. You simply don’t have the right or the authority (let’s not even get into knowledge or wisdom), to meddle like that. No one does. Not yet. Probably not ever.
[quote]Fix the human world. Leave the animals alone. You simply don’t have the right or the authority to meddle like that. No one does. Not yet. Probably not ever.[/quote]
You don’t get to determine whether we do or do not have ‘authority’ to do anything. You, yourself, are not an authority.
We exist in a world where we are free to manipulate whatever we want. All consequences, whether they be good or bad, are for us to deal with.
Alex, inaction is a form of action. We are responsible for the consequences of our actions, but too for the consequences of our inactions.
Michael,
I am interested in what you think about medical research that uses animals as test subjects. Many anti-aging and biomedical research organizations you have talked about in the past have performed experiments (or supported them) on animals.
Ryan, which? I usually only mention the Methuselah Foundation and they support the life extension of mice.
I am against animal experimentation for the long term but in the immediate term I know that some animal research can help a lot of people. The problem is that there’s a lot of research that doesn’t. Computer models are slowly replacing animal experimentation and many biotech companies would not experiment on animals if they couldn’t help it. My dad worked at Genentech a while back and said that the scientists he talked to were optimistic that computer models and other investigative means could replace much animal experimentation in the long term.
Michael,
Excuse me if I sounded like I was challenging you, I was just curious as to your position on this matter. I am glad to see that you are taking a pragmatic approach to the problem.
As for the mice experimentation promoted at Methuselah; I assume some of them don’t make it through the testing process, and I didn’t know how you felt about that. Also, the Blue Brain project (which I believe you have talked about in the past) [url="http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page18924.html"]has stated that it does not seek to replace animal testing, just supplement it. /url]
In any case, most every medical research organization on the planet benefits in some way from animal experimentation.
I am exited about the possibility of digital substitutes for animal and human testing. It has the potential to radically speed up medical research and the time it takes to get new treatments and medications to the market.
Of course, I think it will be a long while before this is achieved and accepted. Complex systems are hard to replicate in computer models; and even if this is achieved, I believe it will be some while before they are used in real research.
Well, here’s hoping.
Ryan,
What about my response made it seem like I was taken aback by “being challenged”? I think you are misreading my tone: I just wanted to know which.
At Methuselah Foundation projects, some mice die of old age, sort of like in the wild. They aren’t using dangerous experimental drugs on mice that kill them. The only unpleasant element is that they have to live in a lab rather than the wild, and they share that in common with huge sectors of medicine and science.
At this point I view some animal experimentation as a necessary evil. I am concerned that a “transhuman revolution” would massively increase the amount of animal testing and have discussed this concern with fellow animal rights activist and transhumanist George Dvorsky.
For health care, animal testing can be useless if not downright harmful. Even different humans don’t react to drugs in at all the same way. I’m hoping to the move toward personalized medicine will enhance our currently pathetic ability to treat chronic problems as well as reduce pointless animal suffering.
According to [url="http://www.njabr.org/programs/research_options/"]this source[/url] the FDA requires animal testing for approval. An increase in medical research in the near future will likely bring more animal experimentation, this is a legitimate concern.
Granting animals “rights” (like us healthy humans enjoy in society) is a more complicated issue; an issue that is too complicated then this format can do justice to; But I will gladly post a response if you wish to talk about it in the future (I know you weren’t talking about that now, just thought I’d mention it.)
In the meantime: Opposing Views (the best site for rational debate on the web that I know of) has posted [url="http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/should-animals-have-the-same-rights-as-people"] a debate on the issue.[/url] And while your there, you might as well check out the [url="http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/can-medical-research-on-animals-be-justified"]“Is animal testing in medical research justified?”[/url] debate.
(excuse me if my links don’t work, I can’t seem get my code right.)
Oh, and if you look at the time stamp of my original post, I did it right before heading off to bed after seeing a movie (Sherlock Holmes, if you care); by the time I made my second post, I worried about how I was coming off. I didn’t want to seem like I was trying to find contradictions in your thinking or challenging your opinion. I was honestly just curious. It was never about your ‘tone’, but mine.
So again, I apologize.
Hmm, I can’t seem to post. well, let me try again then.
Over at Opposing Views, there is a debate between “experts” on weather or not animals deserve rights.
Check it out here:
http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/should-animals-have-the-same-rights-as-people
My original post had more info; will it take awhile to show up because I tried to make links within the post? Did I hit some anti-spammer software somewhere?
Ah well, I don’t have the time or the energy to retype everything; so you’ll just have to make due with this.
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