On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 01:22:43PM -0500, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> What happens to communities who refuse to conform to this "universal
> constitution"? How exactly is this universal constitution enforced? If
> one of the communities violates the constitution by creating and enslaving
> sentients (entirely inside its own walls), is this violation detected, and
> if so how?
Well, here is a rough sketch of how you could run things. More refined
versions are possible:
The "federation" simply consists of the communities that agree on the
constitution. This constitution contains penalty clauses and likely some
mutual defense clauses against outside threats. If a community violates the
constitution, it has to pay the penalty. If it refuses, then it clearly
isn't part of the federation. In addition to clauses guaranteeing free
emigration, it doesn't seem unreasonable to include clauses about free
travel or even inspection from the other communities.
Presumably (since it is formed), there is are advantages in being part of
such a federation - ethical, trade, flow of people (the real creators of
wealth), mutual protection, possibly status and the "seal of approval" that
comes from obeying the constitution (people prefer to move to and invest in
nations where there is a rule of law and the likeliehood of arbitrary
destructive change is low). Being thrown out would likely be a fairly
serious punishment, which unlike penalties cannot be avoided.
Detection of violation can of course never be a foolproof system, but I
think the combination of free emigration, inspection rights and the ease of
whistleblowing given modern technology makes detection sufficiently likely
that it would act as a deterrent from much bad behavior. It is also rather
unlikely a truly closed society would accept being part of a federation
like this, since it would have to agree to limitations on its power that
most closed societies object strongly to, like free migration.
You are apparently thinking more in terms of AI slavery than political
prisoners. Whether the consitution would be about sentient rights or human
rights is of course important in the long run, but setting up a system
somewhat like the above federation is something we can do in the near
future. This system can then adapt to new developments, and if the
constitution update process is not unnecessarily rigid it wouldn't be too
hard to include general sentient rights as people become more aware of
their possibility.
The important thing to remember about systems like this is that we do not
have to get everything perfectly right at the first try. Good political
solutions are flexible and can be adaptive.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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