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Comment by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF | Hacker News Reader

The current vibe seems to be "How replaceable are they?" or maybe "How replaceable are they, compared to their value to everyone else?"

A normal human? Hard to replace, unknown value, given basic rights and dignities but usually not supported to live.

A murderer? Hard to replace but negative value, put to death in many jurisdictions.

A domestic animal? Medium-hard to replace, value is low but known, easy to adopt but also easy to euthanize or ignore. If they attack your cows or crops you'd shoot them.

A farm animal? Easy to replace, grown and eaten for luxury food.

The HeLa cell line? Easy to replace, treated like bacteria.

A human fetus? A matter of great political debate whether they are valuable or replaceable.

Based on this trend line regression, I don't see AIs ever gaining human rights. They're replaceable.

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The extent to which an individual or group has "rights" is defined by its ability to remove value. This can come in the form of physical violence, economic boycott, legal attacks, social ostracism, etc.

Women, minorities, the poor, children, etc have fewer "rights" on average, sometimes explicitly so in some cultures. This is not because of the value they add, which is enormous, but because of the value they can choose to withhold, which is comparatively limited.

I like the cut of your jib, that is an interesting and unique perspective. I would add to the list of "how replaceables",

How many patents do they hold?

Do they owe child support?

All our actions are ultimately driven by selfish motives. If you peer deep enough, you'll always find that selfishness.

A lack of selfishness at some level has the same problem as lack of an immune system. It encourages pathological behavior.

Too much has similar problems as an overactive immune system - it causes eventually self destructive pathologies.

Cooperation is also selfish, even if we don't normally think of it that way. We're working together with others to accomplish something we couldn't alone, but either the result is something we personally desire, or we expect compensation for our help.

Agreed. IMO, the real difference between ‘good’ (aka ‘not selfish’) and ‘bad’ (aka ‘selfish’) behavior is really more about the level of honesty, coercion, control, and degree of autonomy afforded the other participants than actual degree of self interest.

So it’s less about degree of one’s own self interest, and more about the degree of interfering with or manipulating others and their self-interests.

You might or might not be right, but even if you are, the extent to which this is depressing depends a lot on your definition (and delineation) of "self".

Peering deep enough amounts to making 'selfish' a meaningless word.

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