One way to describe this idea is: Under capitalism workers do better than under socialism, but also under capitalism capitalists do better than workers, so once AIs can be workers, why not keep capitalism, but make everyone a capitalist. This does bring out some of the risks to the well-being of the AIs themselves.
"I do not think a statement like "Vasco is tall" is true or false"
Why not?
"given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0
You disagree?"
I think it's unclear exactly what the right thing to say here is, because the sorites paradox is hard to resolve, but yes, probably I disagree. This is the specific to "has moral value" version of the second premise in the standard way of running the sorites paradox. The standard way of running the sorites, with the toy example of "heap" is:
A. 1 grain of sand is not a heap of sand. B: For any number n, if n grains don't make a heap, then n+1 grains don't make a heap. Conclusion, 1 million grains of sand don't make a heap.
It's unclear exactly what the "moral value" version is, unless we pin down what having moral value varies with, but if we say it varies with whether something is a living organism, we can run a version that goes something like:
D) At time t, where t is a time where it's dead, Bob the horse does not have moral value. E) If Bob lacks more value at time t, he also lacks moral value at time t minus 1 planck time. Conclusion: Bob the horse never had moral value.
In the case of the original argument with grains of and, A is absolutely definitely correct, and we definitely want to reject the conclusion, so we have to reject either B or the validity of the argument from A and B to the conclusion. But going from A and B to the conclusion is just modus ponens, and also looks like mathematical proof by induction. So it seems like we have to reject B. Famously rejecting B at least seems to commit you to there being "sharp cut-offs", for example, an exact number of grains that make a heap, an exact answer about where the boundaries of Mount Everest are etc. This is very counter-intuitive, but since B is false, either the "no sharp cut-offs" intuition must just be wrong, or there must be a way of making it compatible with rejecting generalisations like B after all.
"given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0" looks like exactly the sort of no sharp cut-offs-adjacent generalisation that thinking about the sorites shows must be wrong somehow.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ This is worth reading on what philosophers have said about "no sharp cut-off" principles like "given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0"
What does the phrase "current definitions of being tall" pick out exactly?
"The point I wanted to make is that, given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0."
This is the famous claim that vague predicates shouldn't have sharp cut-offs. It's been analyzed to death in philosophy, because it generates paradox, but I don't know of any way of rejecting it that implies that when you have a continuous underlying thing, and a concept that is vague, the concept must apply at least a little bit to every thing on the continuum. And indeed, as I said, I think moving from "this way of distinguishing things from moral status from things without them would lead to an arbitrary cut where things go from zero to one" to "we should reject it", will swiftly get you the view that everything or nothing has moral status if your not careful, because whatever apparently binary on/off thing, like being an organism that gets you onto the continuum that "moral status" is meant to apply to, will turn out itself to look more like something that comes in degrees when you zoom in.
Also death is a process, with a blurry line, that I will eventually undergo, but I'm not a little tiny bit dead if I have an incurable cancer but am currently fit and active.
It doesn't usually follow from a lack of sharp cut-off that something applies to everything. "Tall" lacks a sharp cut-off, but a 5 ft 1 inch tall man is not a little bit tall, he's just not tall. I also doubt you can get rid of arbitrariness here, because if you zoom in far enough the line between organism and not will probably itself get blurry, at least for some possible organism-ish things that could exist or around the moment of death etc.
On the second, only if bacteria have preferences in a morally relevant sense. But yes, it probably does imply that animals and humans get the same moral weight if combined with strict preference utilitarianism. But it's hard to see how else interpersonal utility comparison could be made-in my view, this is true of hedonistic utility comparisons too actually, although that's more controversial-so maybe the problem here is utilitarianism, not the rule.
I like the zero-one rule idea, but the last time I pushed it on here someone pointed out it might run into trouble with two people who have different trade offs between their worst possible and best possible experiences. I.e. if you would take a 51/49 chance of best v worst possible experience, but someone else will only take the deal when the ratio is 80/20, applying the normalization idea possibly breaks. I don't have the mathematical sophistication to work out if this is right, but I suspect you do.
One way to describe this idea is: Under capitalism workers do better than under socialism, but also under capitalism capitalists do better than workers, so once AIs can be workers, why not keep capitalism, but make everyone a capitalist. This does bring out some of the risks to the well-being of the AIs themselves.
"I do not think a statement like "Vasco is tall" is true or false"
Why not?
"given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0
You disagree?"
I think it's unclear exactly what the right thing to say here is, because the sorites paradox is hard to resolve, but yes, probably I disagree. This is the specific to "has moral value" version of the second premise in the standard way of running the sorites paradox. The standard way of running the sorites, with the toy example of "heap" is:
A. 1 grain of sand is not a heap of sand.
B: For any number n, if n grains don't make a heap, then n+1 grains don't make a heap.
Conclusion, 1 million grains of sand don't make a heap.
It's unclear exactly what the "moral value" version is, unless we pin down what having moral value varies with, but if we say it varies with whether something is a living organism, we can run a version that goes something like:
D) At time t, where t is a time where it's dead, Bob the horse does not have moral value.
E) If Bob lacks more value at time t, he also lacks moral value at time t minus 1 planck time.
Conclusion: Bob the horse never had moral value.
In the case of the original argument with grains of and, A is absolutely definitely correct, and we definitely want to reject the conclusion, so we have to reject either B or the validity of the argument from A and B to the conclusion. But going from A and B to the conclusion is just modus ponens, and also looks like mathematical proof by induction. So it seems like we have to reject B. Famously rejecting B at least seems to commit you to there being "sharp cut-offs", for example, an exact number of grains that make a heap, an exact answer about where the boundaries of Mount Everest are etc. This is very counter-intuitive, but since B is false, either the "no sharp cut-offs" intuition must just be wrong, or there must be a way of making it compatible with rejecting generalisations like B after all.
"given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0" looks like exactly the sort of no sharp cut-offs-adjacent generalisation that thinking about the sorites shows must be wrong somehow.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ This is worth reading on what philosophers have said about "no sharp cut-off" principles like "given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0"
What does the phrase "current definitions of being tall" pick out exactly?
"The point I wanted to make is that, given 2 systems which only differ infinitesimally, it should not be the case that one has a moral value of exactly 0, and another has a moral value above exactly 0."
This is the famous claim that vague predicates shouldn't have sharp cut-offs. It's been analyzed to death in philosophy, because it generates paradox, but I don't know of any way of rejecting it that implies that when you have a continuous underlying thing, and a concept that is vague, the concept must apply at least a little bit to every thing on the continuum. And indeed, as I said, I think moving from "this way of distinguishing things from moral status from things without them would lead to an arbitrary cut where things go from zero to one" to "we should reject it", will swiftly get you the view that everything or nothing has moral status if your not careful, because whatever apparently binary on/off thing, like being an organism that gets you onto the continuum that "moral status" is meant to apply to, will turn out itself to look more like something that comes in degrees when you zoom in.
Also death is a process, with a blurry line, that I will eventually undergo, but I'm not a little tiny bit dead if I have an incurable cancer but am currently fit and active.
Why think this though? What's wrong with the view that it's just false that a 5ft 1 man is tall?
It doesn't usually follow from a lack of sharp cut-off that something applies to everything. "Tall" lacks a sharp cut-off, but a 5 ft 1 inch tall man is not a little bit tall, he's just not tall. I also doubt you can get rid of arbitrariness here, because if you zoom in far enough the line between organism and not will probably itself get blurry, at least for some possible organism-ish things that could exist or around the moment of death etc.
On the first point, maybe I'm wrong then.
On the second, only if bacteria have preferences in a morally relevant sense. But yes, it probably does imply that animals and humans get the same moral weight if combined with strict preference utilitarianism. But it's hard to see how else interpersonal utility comparison could be made-in my view, this is true of hedonistic utility comparisons too actually, although that's more controversial-so maybe the problem here is utilitarianism, not the rule.
I like the zero-one rule idea, but the last time I pushed it on here someone pointed out it might run into trouble with two people who have different trade offs between their worst possible and best possible experiences. I.e. if you would take a 51/49 chance of best v worst possible experience, but someone else will only take the deal when the ratio is 80/20, applying the normalization idea possibly breaks. I don't have the mathematical sophistication to work out if this is right, but I suspect you do.
https://www.socialeurope.eu/omnibus-to-nowhere-the-quiet-dismantling-of-european-governance
What do you think the important claims being made in this piece are, and what evidence do you think it is giving for them?