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Defletteryesterday at 4:44 PM2 repliesview on HN

Except that this holds true for everything. For example, I only just today found out about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yo7_Inikg&t=1157s, ie, Oracle's apparent complicity in genocide. Now that I know this, I now have to rethink things: what am I using that depends on Oracle that I need to migrate away from? This wasn't something I was concerned about just 24 hours ago. This is not to say it's not a valid concern: we should divest from companies and organisations complicit in genocide, but this is demonstrably a case where I have given myself more work, more worry, from gaining knowledge.


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Paracompactyesterday at 8:04 PM

Conscientiousness is incompatible with monotonicity of capability. That is:

1. We tend to believe "more power/knowledge/choices" is universally a good thing; that we are rational creatures in some sort of game theoretic landscape where we are free to optimize for our own outcomes, and extra options or information can only be to our optimization benefit.

2. We tend to believe that as moral agents, we have obligations to Good. More specifically, knowingly choosing against Good should in proportion produce Guilt.

The bind that results from (1)+(2) is distinctly Christian to me, obsessed as Christianity is with the notion of shame as a moral whip. It is an exercise in religionmaking how to structure one's psychological incentives so that solipsism is avoided while not sacrificing (1).

Henchman21yesterday at 4:55 PM

You’re aware IBM was not just complicit but essentially made the Holocaust possible with their counting machines? Had technicians permanently staffed in the fucking camps? The the numbers on people’s arms corresponded to IBM punch cards?

Are you aware of the world you live in?

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