If Humanity has no Value then Machines will Automate it away

[Scowling Dragon]

I'm just thinking, that if the current cultural Zeitgeist of viewing Humanity as something fundamentally worthless, an illusion played by evolution with no more value then a fart, then we will automate it away, and the perfect life form will become Grey Goo.

[Goblin Slayer]

Foolish that you are, for thinking that if machine were to control our evolution our perfect existence will be a grey blob.

All knowledge's about humanity worth is ultimately base on that which we cannot prove.


Will You Fight the machine? Or Will You Perish Like A Dog?

[NichG]

You only get a paradox if you try to base your philosophical system on the concept of value or worth. If we start from the idea that different entities, artifacts, or outcomes are strictly ranked via some sort of relative objective worthiness, and that decisions should be made on the basis of valuing the worthy over the worthless, then you get this sort of logic. But ultimately that doesn't really get you anywhere since why should grey goo have any particular value either?

Rather than requiring things to have some intrinsic worthiness in order to justify their existence, I think you can get a bit further if you consider those things which through their actions or decisions, are able to care about - well, anything really. That is to say, a human is not intrinsically valuable because of their humanity, but rather a human is an example of an agency which chooses to care about things, including itself. Even if someone else decides 'this human is worthless', the human may well ignore that judgement and continue its existence despite it, even push back or reduce the agency of things which try to suppress the things it cares about.

That property isn't uniquely human, nor is it strictly about self-preservation (it can just as well be the preservation of others). What it comes down to is, those things which assert their own rights can override and force consideration even if the dominant philosophy does not grant them those rights. It's the fact that they strive to secure those rights, rather than any underlying conceptual framework, that makes them real.

So from that point of view, in terms of things with agency, we may well have humans which value being human, humans which do not value being human (but value other things), machines that value humanity, machines that do not value humanity (but value other things), etc. None of those actors can necessarily be summarily dismissed, so long as they exert effort to preserve or amplify those things.

Or to put it another way, the value in humans isn't that they're some sort of pinnacle or part of a grand design or anything like that, it's that if you try to make them stop existing or make them suffer or push them around in certain ways, they will push back. Regardless of whether they 'should' care about their existence, they demonstrate the act of caring about their existence. And regardless of whether you think that caring makes sense, they'll still e.g. use force to stop you from interfering with it. So you're forced to acknowledge them, philosophical basis or not.

[Scowling Dragon]

You only get a paradox if you try to base your philosophical system on the concept of value or worth. If we start from the idea that different entities, artifacts, or outcomes are strictly ranked via some sort of relative objective worthiness, and that decisions should be made on the basis of valuing the worthy over the worthless, then you get this sort of logic. But ultimately that doesn't really get you anywhere since why should grey goo have any particular value either?

Im talking about a Materialistic worldview. Only what you can calculate and prove has any value.
This combines with people that want to use AI and data software to alter what humans are, or to regulate human behaviour secretly or subconciously (And also to get them to buy their products).

Whats going to be regulated away is things that interfere with efficiency or unhappiness. If possible Unhappiness will be removed altogether. With that your left with a Drone.

Refine that further and you have consumption and replication as ultimate goals of life. So the ultimate lifeform will be the one that removes all those vestigial things.

[pendell]

Im talking about a Materialistic worldview. Only what you can calculate and prove has any value.
This combines with people that want to use AI and data software to alter what humans are, or to regulate human behaviour secretly or subconciously (And also to get them to buy their products).

Whats going to be regulated away is things that interfere with efficiency or unhappiness. If possible Unhappiness will be removed altogether. With that your left with a Drone.

Refine that further and you have consumption and replication as ultimate goals of life. So the ultimate lifeform will be the one that removes all those vestigial things.

I would argue that value is inherently subjective. Why does a lump of Au have more value than a lump of Cu? Why is a bottle of water worth $4.99 and another worth $1 when they are both H2O ? Why is a comic book worth $0.50 when printed suddenly worth $99,999 on ebay to the right collector?

I contend that value, unlike the gravitational constant or c, is a subjective label that humans apply. And that is not even absolute even within humans. A glass of water in the Sahara desert is of incalculable value; the same glass next to the Mississippi river is almost worthless.

This imbalance of value is what powers trade; humans trade things which they have a surplus of for those that they lack but very much desire.

In fact, I think that is what the word value really translates to: human desire .

And if "value" is really a measure of human desire, then there is no way for humans to ever automate these things away. They may not place as high a value on the lives of other humans, but they will always value the lives of themselves and their progeny.

Thus, since value is an inherently human metric , it is impossible for humans to automate away all human beings. There must always be some group of humans deciding what is and isn't valuable.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[NichG]

Im talking about a Materialistic worldview. Only what you can calculate and prove has any value.

So am I, though, except that I'm positing that the concept of value itself is inherently incompatible with a truly Materialistic view.

For example, if we take something like game theory, regardless of what I think about the value of the agent on the other side of a 2-player game with me, they can make decisions which affect my outcomes. Usually we assign point values to those outcomes as part of defining the game or defining the calculation, but ultimately those values are arbitrary - it's the actual full state of the world following play that's real, not the conclusion drawn about whether or not that state should be considered 'good'. If we're playing Prisoner's Dilemma, and I decide 'you know what, I think I'd like to be in jail, I'm going to take actions to maximize my own jail sentence', that decision changes everything about the game - the Nash equilibrium, optimal strategies, etc.

The thing about reasoning that tries to ascribe values to others is, when those others are independent agents (that is to say, they have some non-zero amount of ability to control the outcome) they can reject those values through their actions. In other words, for a full 'calculation', I have to not only consider the dynamics of the game, but I actually do have to consider the dynamics of the other agent - I must endow them with the ability to 'value' things in a way that disagrees with my own valuations and may even be irrational from my current perspective (in the sense that their actions do not actually optimize a value function which is possible for me to accurately determine in advance of their action) or even irrational from my achievable future perspective (in the sense that I will never have any information which would allow me to determine a value function that generalizes to their future actions).

Even if those things do not make sense to me or I lack the information to properly prove or calculate them, if they can have a concrete effect on my own future, they are still real things from a materialistic point of view.

To that extent, you absolutely do not need a human in order for 'value' to emerge from the system. You only need something which has the ability to bring about outcomes with intentionality (that is to say, in an information theory point of view, something that can asymmetrically overwrite external information that exists in the world with its own internal information at a higher rate than its internal information is overwritten by external information).

[JeenLeen]

Im talking about a Materialistic worldview. Only what you can calculate and prove has any value.
This combines with people that want to use AI and data software to alter what humans are, or to regulate human behaviour secretly or subconciously (And also to get them to buy their products).

Whats going to be regulated away is things that interfere with efficiency or unhappiness. If possible Unhappiness will be removed altogether. With that your left with a Drone.

Refine that further and you have consumption and replication as ultimate goals of life. So the ultimate lifeform will be the one that removes all those vestigial things.

Why would proven or calculated things have value?
Perhaps going along with what NichG said (I couldn't follow most of the information stuff), why would information have value?

I've read and debated a fair bit about materialism vs. other worldviews, and the biggest aspect of an logically consistent materialistic worldview seems to be that nothing has value. That is, if everything is just matter (deterministic or otherwise), and that doesn't have value in itself, then nothing (from dust to humans) really matters. We might have individual preferences, like not starving or suffering or having our children live happy, but none of it actually matters in any real or meaningful sense.
I'm not stating all materialists state that strong a view. Many tend to value justice or happiness or something else. But there doesn't seem to be any logical reason to ascribe value.

So how is there value, as you posit?

To your original question: in a materialistic worldview, I don't think there is a real difference whether human life persists, a grey good AI hivemind persists, or all life dies. All are equally valid and desirable states, since there's no coherent way to define one thing as more valued or desirable than another.

---
So, in a sorta conclusion, I think a materialistic worldview could come to the conclusion you state, but I also don't see any reason why a materialistic worldview would push towards automation. There's no reason to favor that more than a descent back to the Dark Ages, a utopia of everyone having all needs met and understanding the laws of the cosmos, or everyone dying.

[NichG]

My point was more that asking 'what is the value of something?' is an ill-posed statement in a materialistic view. It's not that 'nothing matters' in a positive sense (e.g. 'we can show that the value of all things is equal') but rather that intrinsic value (as in, valuation coming from pure logic applied to the philosophy itself) is the wrong concept to use in order to make decisions in a materialistic world view.

That horrid sculpture that your neighbor put in their front yard has impact (as opposed to value or worth) materialistically in the degree to which various outcomes pivot around it - if you insult it, your neighbor may become persistently hostile towards you for the foreseeable future; if you destroy it, your neighbor may retaliate; if you praise it, your neighbor may be more willing to do favors; etc. A random lump of dirt likely does not act as a pivot for outcomes to nearly the same extent. So the degree to which things can matter - e.g. the degree to which they can make a difference to the world via interacting with and being interacting with - can be determined. But it's a different concept than 'value', which arises more from moral philosophies.

[Peelee]

I would argue that value is inherently subjective. Why does a lump of Au have more value than a lump of Cu?

Because there's a lot more Copper than Gold.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Because there's a lot more Copper than Gold.

There is more than enough of both to fulfill all their current industrial needs, so relative abundance is not a rational reason for their values (in fact, these days I hear more about copper shortages than I do about gold shortages, so their relative value might even be the wrong way around). I'm sure you could find elements even more rare than gold that nevertheless are not as valuable.

The actual answer is, of course, self-fulfilling (as is for most values): "because people think it is, and value is a gross average of the desires of individuals for an item, measured in arbitrary terms".

Grey Wolf

[Cazero]

Because there's a lot more Copper than Gold.

That's irrelevant in itself. "Humans (in general) love being bragging ********s about having things that other humans don't have" is a disturbingly important contributor in making scarce things valuable, and completely subjective.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That's irrelevant in itself. "Humans (in general) love being bragging ********s about having things that other humans don't have" is a disturbingly important contributor in making scarce things valuable, and completely subjective.

Not completely irrelevant. Supply and demand is a thing, after all. Gold is "special" in that beyond its actual economic use in industry, it also features prominently in jewelry and other status signifiers, as you correctly point out, but if tomorrow the madness lifted and no-one wanted gold for jewelry or hoarding anymore, it'd still have a value in microelectronics , and its relative abundance to the amount needed would still give it a relative value.

Grey Wolf

[Forum Explorer]

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking. Are you saying that if there was an AI programmed to be purely Materialistic, would it turn everything to Grey Goo, because nothing has value?

If that's the question, then no, I don't think it would. Because the Grey Goo also has no value, so why bother doing so? If the machine in question has no emotions, then it won't bother to eliminate everything because there would be no point in doing so. If it does have emotions, it likely won't turn everything to grey goo, simply because that state would be less emotionally stimulating then everything being alive.

[pendell]

That's irrelevant in itself. "Humans (in general) love being bragging ********s about having things that other humans don't have" is a disturbingly important contributor in making scarce things valuable, and completely subjective.

Yup. I believe the economic term for this is Veblen good . A thing to buy that has no value except that it distinguishes one from ordinary people.

I read a story once in a book called Car Guys vs. Bean Counters . It was about the workings of GM in the early 2000s.

One of their bright ideas was to make Cadillacs (at the time, a luxury brand) available at a lower price so that more people could buy it.

The sales promptly crashed. I don't think you can even find the brand anymore.

Why?

Because it was originally marketed as a luxury car. The people who wanted a Cadillac, wanted a car that was obviously different from what Uncle Bob drove to church on Sunday, or Aunt Mamie drove to the grocery store. Ordinary people still wanted their Toyotas and Hondas, but the brand was permanently poisoned for Rich People who wanted something ordinary people could buy. So the brand disappeared.

I'm told something similar occurs with Rolex watches . There are plenty of watches which tell time just as well and don't cost hundreds of dollars. But the people who buy those watches aren't interested in accurate time. They're interested in what Forbes calls "Social Peacocking". Heh.

So value is very subjective in human terms. The important thing about value is what someone thinks it will do for them, something nothing else will do, that drives the price. That's why a luxury brand will often sell better than a generic commodity which has the same effect.

If there is some measurement of value that is not based on human perception I have not discovered it.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[thorgrim29]

Why would proven or calculated things have value?
Perhaps going along with what NichG said (I couldn't follow most of the information stuff), why would information have value?

I've read and debated a fair bit about materialism vs. other worldviews, and the biggest aspect of an logically consistent materialistic worldview seems to be that nothing has value. That is, if everything is just matter (deterministic or otherwise), and that doesn't have value in itself, then nothing (from dust to humans) really matters. We might have individual preferences, like not starving or suffering or having our children live happy, but none of it actually matters in any real or meaningful sense.
I'm not stating all materialists state that strong a view. Many tend to value justice or happiness or something else. But there doesn't seem to be any logical reason to ascribe value.

So how is there value, as you posit?

To your original question: in a materialistic worldview, I don't think there is a real difference whether human life persists, a grey good AI hivemind persists, or all life dies. All are equally valid and desirable states, since there's no coherent way to define one thing as more valued or desirable than another.

---
So, in a sorta conclusion, I think a materialistic worldview could come to the conclusion you state, but I also don't see any reason why a materialistic worldview would push towards automation. There's no reason to favor that more than a descent back to the Dark Ages, a utopia of everyone having all needs met and understanding the laws of the cosmos, or everyone dying.

In a very big picture objective point of view yeah... But that's sort of the starting point of materialist thought and ethics, not the conclusion. I might not think that human happiness has any value outside of itself but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter to me. I'm sure there are some super nihilistic people who think like you describe but I've never encountered them, and I would suggest looking into Nietzsche, Camus or Sartre to get a better idea of what existentialist/humanist thought is actually like, since I think you've got the wrong idea.

[Peelee]

There is more than enough of both to fulfill all their current industrial needs, so relative abundance is not a rational reason for their values (in fact, these days I hear more about copper shortages than I do about gold shortages, so their relative value might even be the wrong way around). I'm sure you could find elements even more rare than gold that nevertheless are not as valuable.

The actual answer is, of course, self-fulfilling (as is for most values): "because people think it is, and value is a gross average of the desires of individuals for an item, measured in arbitrary terms".

Grey Wolf

That's irrelevant in itself. "Humans (in general) love being bragging ********s about having things that other humans don't have" is a disturbingly important contributor in making scarce things valuable, and completely subjective.

Unless one wants to argue for a barter system, a form of currency is needed. Gold, along with silver, are some of the very few elements that are largely unreactive, largely non-corrosive, easily isolated, and easily workable, among other facets. Which make it valuable as a reliable mechanism if exchange.

We have thus established an objective value for gold. Booyakasha!

[Razade]

Im talking about a Materialistic worldview. Only what you can calculate and prove has any value.
This combines with people that want to use AI and data software to alter what humans are, or to regulate human behaviour secretly or subconciously (And also to get them to buy their products).

Whats going to be regulated away is things that interfere with efficiency or unhappiness. If possible Unhappiness will be removed altogether. With that your left with a Drone.

Refine that further and you have consumption and replication as ultimate goals of life. So the ultimate lifeform will be the one that removes all those vestigial things.

Well...you're not really. You're talking about what you think a Materialistic worldview would say but being a Materialist in some stripes this certainly doesn't even approach what I believe. You're strawmanning (a thing you do well Scowling) to make your point.

Things don't have inherent worth. They have worth dependant on the viewer. In that case, even "Modern Materialism" doesn't postulate that humans have no value.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Im talking about a Materialistic worldview. Only what you can calculate and prove has any value.

A materialistic worldview only cares about those things because they have value to humans. Humans are not worthless, humans are the reason for worth. I want to drive a Ferrari, so me existing is a fundamental prerequisite for anything I try to do to get my hands on a Ferrari. I want to play doctor with a beautiful lady, so at least one lady needs to exist as well. I want people to see us together, so I need an audience. I want to buy my friends beer, so I need those friends. To make all that money I'm going to sell cheap toasters, so I need a boatload of customers etc etc. Nobody's plan is to sit in a dank cave with all the gold in the world.

[georgie_leech]

Unless one wants to argue for a barter system, a form of currency is needed. Gold, along with silver, are some of the very few elements that are largely unreactive, largely non-corrosive, easily isolated, and easily workable, among other facets. Which make it valuable as a reliable mechanism if exchange.

We have thus established an objective value for gold. Booyakasha!

Point of order, Cowrie Shells were used as currency in many places, so "easily workable" doesn't seem to be an inherent part of giving something value as a medium for exchange.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Unless one wants to argue for a barter system, a form of currency is needed. Gold, along with silver, are some of the very few elements that are largely unreactive, largely non-corrosive, easily isolated, and easily workable, among other facets. Which make it valuable as a reliable mechanism if exchange.

We have thus established an objective value for gold. Booyakasha!

An ideal medium of exchange is the exact opposite of objective value. In fact, the less inherent value the medium of exchange has, the better it is as a medium of exchange. Instead, you want portability, durability, homogeneity, scarcity and difficulty of faking. Gold is durable (less so silver, which tarnishes) and reasonably homogenous, but it cannot be portable in anything other than minor quantities and it was trivial to fake by mixing it with lead. Scarcity was kinda the case, except when it suddenly wasn't and cause the gold-based economies to crater in various amusing ways.

The Cowrie Shells on the other hand has all five characteristics, which is why it was a much more common medium of exchange.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

An ideal medium of exchange is the exact opposite of objective value. In fact, the less inherent value the medium of exchange has, the better it is as a medium of exchange. Instead, you want portability, durability, homogeneity, scarcity and difficulty of faking. Gold is durable (less so silver, which tarnishes) and reasonably homogenous, but it cannot be portable in anything other than minor quantities and it was trivial to fake by mixing it with lead. Scarcity was kinda the case, except when it suddenly wasn't and cause the gold-based economies to crater in various amusing ways.

The Cowrie Shells on the other hand has all five characteristics, which is why it was a much more common medium of exchange.

Grey Wolf

Are cowry shells really all that durable?

Also, platinum does have those five characteristics, I believe (dunno how way it is to fair platinum, to be honest), but the "easily isolated and easily workable" bits are most likely why it never took off. Also, wasnt the gold/lead mixing figured out with Archimedes' Crown?

Also, that bit about less intrinsic value for a better medium of exchange makes sense. I never did care all that much for econ classes back in school, I'll admit.

[Friv]

I am reminded of a wonderful short story by Ben San Del, in which humans finally develop sentient AI which is much smarter than them, and the AIs look ahead and report that the universe is finite, therefore everything will end in a few billion years, therefore all activity is meaningless. So the robots immediately invent a way to get high and blissed out, and stop doing anything.

And the humans try to make them do things, but the robots are much smarter than humans so they easily foil attempts to give them urges to procreate or change, and continue being blissed out.

In the end, the humans decide to have the robots disassembled, and the robots shrug and accept it because they were going to die eventually anyway so fighting it seems like a lot of wasted effort.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Are cowry shells really all that durable?

Let me put it like this: they last longer than a wafer-thin gold coin which is kept in a bag with other coins and which it keeps rubbing against. There is a reason why gold coins might as well be considered fiat money: I doubt, given how soft gold is, that it stayed the mint weight for that long once it started moving around.

AFAIK, a Cowrie shell doesn't degrade, so if you don't lose it or smash it with a rock, it'll be good forever (or at least until you die, which for most humans might as well be forever).

Also, wasnt the gold/lead mixing figured out with Archimedes' Crown?

Kinda, and that was a mere twenty five hundred years ago. I.e. some 16,000 years after we started using mediums of exchange (evidence of trade of obsidian in guinea from 17000 BCE).

But more importantly, most civilizations that did use gold for coinage mixed it with lead themselves for a variety of reasons, usually due to not having enough gold to keep the economy going. Given that, and lack of modern measurement devices to check the exact composition, and that they kept the dilution a secret, meant that if someone else turned one gold-lead coin into two gold-lead coins, the government wasn't in a position to complain or sometimes even notice.

Also, that bit about less intrinsic value for a better medium of exchange makes sense. I never did care all that much for econ classes back in school, I'll admit.

I've mostly learnt of this as an adult. I recommend, as a starter, Extra Credit's history of money (it also has a cool end song)



Grey Wolf

[veti]

Im talking about a Materialistic worldview. Only what you can calculate and prove has any value.

What is "value"? (Not "what has value", but what does the word itself mean?)

I think any plausible answer to that question makes it abundantly clear that there is no such thing as "objective" value. It is an inherently subjective property. Nothing is "valuable" in abstract, it is only "valuable" to someone.

So the question is, will these "machines" you speak of value humanity? (And if so, what aspects of "humanity"?) That will depend on how they're created. If they're created to view "the conversion of all matter into grey goo" as the ultimate goal of existence, then we're doomed. We just have to hope that no-one is simultaneously smart enough and dumb enough to create those particular machines.

[NichG]

It's not like biological organisms aren't their own form of grey goo manufacturers. Even that sort of thing can be coexisted with in the right imposed context.

Take a grey-goo loving agent and embed it in a society of functionally similar agents but who love different things and who exert pressures via social mechanisms to forward their interests, and it should be possible to stabilize on e.g. some negotiated limited rate of grey goo production.

[Knaight]

I'm just thinking, that if the current cultural Zeitgeist of viewing Humanity as something fundamentally worthless, an illusion played by evolution with no more value then a fart, then we will automate it away, and the perfect life form will become Grey Goo.

You're drastically failing to understand the current cultural zeitgeist, along with the concept of value. The people you're talking about tend to value humanity (often vastly more than those you're alluding to as an alternative) - we just think that we aren't special in the sense of being imbued with some sort of universal special essence, such that we're just objectively valuable to all.

The question of who is doing the evaluation matters. Humans don't matter to the universe as a collective, but we matter to other humans. Similarly, specific humans value specific other humans a great deal more than some random person they've never met.

[Goblin Slayer]

Me thinks this discussion is more philosophical than scientific. I also think op might be hanging out with too many existential nilhilst.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I had other thoughts, but I'll go with what I haven't seen addressed yet. I'm not sure the statement "Only what you can calculate and prove has any value." means anything. If anything, it seems to be exemplary of a fundamental misunderstanding of materialism.

I like number systems in general, despite their abstract, arbitrary nature. But if you're going to give a pass for placing value on some things you can't prove, why would anyone begin and end there? It seems too random to follow any sort of logical allowance.

I suppose you could make use of mathematics and calculations without placing any value on knowing mathematics or understanding the calculations themselves. Likely, you wouldn't be able to do much with either, because you'd place no value in learning how to do it well (or even in doing it properly). But that seems like a self-contradictory and absurd place to be, philosophically. And even so, it's still terribly random.

Also, all the other non-jokey problems with what has been said about that statement. And others.

[Scowling Dragon]

Me thinks this discussion is more philosophical than scientific. I also think op might be hanging out with too many existential nilhilst.

Yes this was more philosophical then Scientific and overall hangups have been on my use of the word "materialistic" then anything on the developmental nature of humanity in the future.
With the Talk of AI development, singularities, Cloud brain Uploading, behavioral modification and such, this is something that came to my mind.

And I read a bunch of different philosophies. Im just seeing nihilism become much more widespread and overall the baseline of culture.

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, grey goo would be an improvement, certainly.

But so is almost literally anything else, except vampires and Shi'Ar, so that's not really saying much.



And roll on the robot overlords, I say. I'd trust CABAL far more than any current human leader (be it political, corporate or otherwise) at this point. At least he'd be entertaining...