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Comment by polygamous_bat | Hacker News Reader

The only way I could parse it was the following logical chain: Lesswrongers definitely bend more libertarian than the rest of the population, and the common aphorism that "libertarians are just conservatives who like to smoke weed".

Although, with a few conversations that I have had with the "alignment" enthusiasts gave me the impression that in their opinion, many of the hot button issues like climate change/social inequality/global poverty etc. are irrelevant and not worth spending time over, because AI alignment is a much more serious threat. In that view, 90% or more of their political position overlaps with the conservative crowd ("issue X/Y/Z is not worth our time, and we should just let it happen as it does now"). So I am not surprised an outsider may label them as conservative.

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There are strong parallels between a belief in AI supremacy (roko's basilisk and the like) and belief in divine punishment (pascal's wager and the like). I've heard people mockingly describe superintelligence as "catholicism for nerds," so I could certainly entertain the idea that lesswrongers are conservative.

If i believed in socially progressive lib values, but thought a non-explicitly progressive issue was a major immanent threat... you'd consider me conservative for the structure of my priorities?

Not following the logic at all here.

The GP does not. They just describe how some people might (and absolutely do!) follow that train of thought.

What specifically gives you that impression? They describe their experience talking to alignment people, characterise it with the 90% rule, and describe their preference for tackling the 90% issue as in line with apathetic or ideologically opposed to remedy conservatives. They then say they are not surprised outsiders might label them conservative - _just as they have_.

They are describing their own view _and_ attributing their reasoning to others.

But the argument isn't valid.

Nope, they're just saying that some people worrying about hard AGI takeoff argue that alignment is a more important problem to solve than many others because a) an aligned AGI can help us solve all the other problems, and b) an unaligned AGI can make all the other problems irrelevant due to, well, human extinction.

So if you have liberal values and consider a hard takeoff a likely near-to-medium-term scenario, then it's perfectly reasonable to argue that you should prioritize alignment research over almost anything else, because it's a critical instrumental goal for achieving all your other goals. This by no means makes you any less of a liberal, or more of a conservative.

But people who are more interested in virtue signalling than results, and/or don't know about or believe in a hard takeoff scenario, may interpret this train of thought as "conservative" because it appears to not match the standard thought patterns that a good, card-carrying liberal is supposed to have.

what is the anti-state, anti-capital perspective on AGI safety?

Just because people decide to focus their time on one issue (say AI), doesn't mean that they don't appreciate people working on other issues. Another example: I can appreciate a local soccer coach without having to believe that their work is equally important as that of the president/prime minister.

Yeah, libertarians who believe in universal basic income— yeah, that probably needs a new word.

Capital-unism sounds awful enough

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