2026-03-28
The core of my morality around ASI risk is very simple
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- Contains politically sensitive info
Main
- The core of my morality is very simple.
- If one of my friends of many years eventually became a billionaire building ASI and risking human extinction, and they had deranged beliefs that this would get us a utopia, and slitting their throat with a razor was the only way to save my life, then ofcourse I kill my (ex-)friend and save my life.
- (In practice I don't think any single asassination is likely to solve ASI risk. In practice, I also don't think xrisk is certain, we are facing more like a russian roulette of atleast 10% xrisk by 2030, atleast another 5% more xrisk by 2035, and all this is a martingale process where the numbers go up and down with every passing year. All this makes reality more complicated than this thought experiment.)
- If one of my friends of many years eventually became a billionaire building ASI, and they had deranged beliefs that this would get us a utopia, then ofcourse I stop having a close friendship with them, and ofcourse I try to get them ostracised from any close friend group (I don't do group interactions much in general, but let's say I did).
- If one of my friends of many years went to work at an AI company building ASI, and they bought the AI company koolaid, I obviously stop trusting their judgement on basically everything to do with ASI and also on 10 other topics.
- I can look my friends in the eye and tell them these basic facts. It's not some big secret.
- I have long track record over many years of considering violence as a way to solve problems. This is in practice, not just in theory.
- For privacy reasons, not listing examples here.
- I am not that squeamish watching actual rape or murder videos.
- So far, I have been able to solve or atleast placate all the major problems in my life without actual violence. I definitely seem to impliticly operate on some sort of harm minimisation principle, if I look at my past actions. It is just that harm minimisation when solving a problem as big as ASI risk still means harming atleast some people.
- For anyone else reading this: I am not saying your friends should have the same moral weight as strangers. I am saying that if you are willing to kill even your friends over this, then ofcourse you'd be willing to do that to people you barely know.
- Everything else is complexity around my identity (for instance my identity as a pro-democracy pro-capitalist), or parts of people I like (I like high openness-to-experience technical people), or complexity around social consequences (my reputation, long-term consequences, ingroup coordination and trust, coordination against shared outgroup, what behaviour I will inspire of others) or complexity around managing day-to-day emotions (should I be activated or numb or curious? its a marathon not a sprint). All this complexity shouldn't blind me to the fact that the core is very simple.
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