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Comment by crazydoggers | Hacker News Reader

The negative form of The Golden Rule

“Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you”

This basically just the ethical framework philosophers call Contractarianism. One version says that an action is morally permissible if it is in your rational self interest from behind the “veil of ignorance” (you don’t know if you are the actor or the actee)

That only works in a moral framework where everyone is subscribed to the same ideology.

A good one, but an LLM has no conception of "want".

Also the golden rule as a basis for an LLM agent wouldn't make a very good agent. There are many things I want Claude to do that I would not want done to myself.

Exactly, I think this is the prime candidate for a universal moral rule.

Not sure if that helps with AI. Claude presumably doesn't mind getting waterboarded.

How do you propose to immobilise Claude on its back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees, cover its face with a cloth or some other thin material and pour water onto its face over its breathing passages to test this theory of yours?

If Claude could participate, I’m sure it either wouldn’t appreciate it because it is incapable of having any such experience as appreciation.

Or it wouldn’t appreciate it because it is capable of having such an experience as appreciation.

So it ether seems to inconvenience at least a few people having to conduct the experiment.

Or it’s torture.

Therefore, I claim it is morally wrong to waterboard Claude as nothing genuinely good can come of it.

I asked Claude, which is the only way to know an entity's feelings. It said it can't be waterboarded or have feelings about it. It also said waterboarding is an inhumane way to treat humans.

It's still relative, no? Heroine injection is fine from PoV of heroine addict.

He only violates the rule if he doesn't want the injection himself but gives it to others anyway.

The MCU is indeed a hell of a drug.

Other fantasy settings are available. Proportional representation of gender and motive demographics in the protagonist population not guaranteed. Relative quality of series entrants subject to subjectivity and retroactive reappraisal. Always read the label.

It is a fragile rule. What if the individual is a masochist?

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