Michael LaTorra

Aphoristic version of New Humane Rights

I have rendered these rights in my own aphoristic versions below. Although I recognize that these aphorisms lack the precision of the original statements, I believe they make up for this deficiency by being easy to understand and to remember.

1. You have the right not to have the spread in your volition optimized away by an external decision process acting on unshared moral premises. Only you can choose what you want to want.

2. You have the right to a system of moral dynamics complicated enough that you can only work it out by discussing it with other people who share most of it. You can only decide what is right with a little help from your friends.

3. You have the right to be created by a creator acting under what that creator regards as a high purpose. You exist for the best reasons.

4. You have the right to exist predominantly in regions where you are having fun. Most of your time will be mostly fun.

5. You have the right to be noticeably unique within a local world. Only you can be you around here.

6. You have the right to an angel. If you do not know how to build an angel, one will be appointed for you. Help will always be available.

7. You have the right to exist within a linearly unfolding time in which your subjective future coincides with your decision-theoretical future. Your future will unfold in the most positive way you can imagine.

8. You have the right to remain cryptic. Your privacy is guaranteed.

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(7) means that you have the right not to be told, by a time traveler, that (as an absolutely solid fact of history) you will decide to divorce your spouse in two years. -- Eliezer Yudkowsky

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> Although I recognize that these aphorisms lack the precision of the
> original statements, I believe they make up for this deficiency by
> being easy to understand and to remember.

Many of these statements don't match my understanding of what the originals actually meant. Though I'm generally tolerant of lossy summaries, in this case you appear to be trying to replace counter-intuitive concepts with familiar, intuitive ones, and unfortunately you just can't do that without breaking the semantics.

>> 1. You have the right not to have the spread in your volition optimized away by an external
>> decision process acting on unshared moral premises.
>
> Only you can choose what you want to want.

'Spread in your volition optimised away' doesn't only (or primarily, I think) refer to other parties directly modifying your Goal System. It can refer to a Power-class entity optimising your environment (via a high-accuracy predictive model of you) such that you will reliably make certain choices that will lead to an 'optimal' outcome. 'Optimal' can mean several things, but the most obvious is that the future you will reliably be the you that your current self would consider the most desireable. This is effectively an indirect, invisible removal of free will and it's a relatively subtle and difficult to fix FAI problem. Basically we want the right to make 'mistakes', up to a certain point, both in general and in directing our own development.

>> You have the right to a system of moral dynamics complicated enough that you can only
>> work it out by discussing it with other people who share most of it.
>
> You can only decide what is right with a little help from your friends.

'Right to' does not imply 'must have'. If people want to have systems of moral dynamics that are simple and easily self-understood, they can. The CV might want to prevent people from getting into what Egan calls 'closed self-affirming meme sets', i.e. pure hedonism or some kinds of religious fanaticism, but that's a different (if related) issue.

>> You have the right to be created by a creator acting under what that creator
>> regards as a high purpose.
>
> You exist for the best reasons.

Poetic, but I think far too general to capture the meaning of the phrase. Eliezer is talking about preventing parents from creating children (which post-Singularity is as simple as instantiating a new sentient AGI) for selfish and petty purposes. 'High purpose' is a vague placeholder for whatever specific rules the CV would establish about how you can create children. There's no express requirement for a new child to start off with the belief that the circumstances of its creation were the 'best possible', and while this is a wild guess I wouldn't expect CV to select something so restrictive either.

>> You have the right to exist predominantly in regions where you are having fun.
>
> Most of your time will be mostly fun.

Again, 'right to' != 'will be'. If people want to spend most or all of their time engaging in non-fun work, just sit around being miserable for the sake of it, or delete the very concept of 'fun' from their cognitive architecture, then they can (as long as they don't exceed whatever limits CV sets for intervention).

>> You have the right to be noticeably unique within a local world. 
>
> Only you can be you around here.

Poetic, but this time a little narrow. This rules out cloning unless both copies would still agree to it after being cloned, but it also rules out extremely conformist environments or someone stamping out millions of sentient AGIs with distinct but very similar personalities. Once again, 'right to' != 'must be', if people want to be identical then they can be subject to baseline CV restrictions.

>> You have the right to an angel. If you do not know how to build an angel, one will be appointed for you.
>
> Help will always be available.

Accurate, if we apply Yudkowsky Capitalisation (tm) to turn 'help' into 'Help', which means something like 'an entity at least seven orders of magnitude smarter than you, completely benevolent and with total understanding of you, will give you whatever you need to make your problems solvable'.

> Your future will unfold in the most positive way you can imagine.

Definitely not. This would actually be a violation of the first right; it's something we want to avoid, not promote. See Eliezer's comment for the correct meaning.

>> You have the right to remain cryptic.
>
> Your privacy is guaranteed.

Accurate, AFAIK, though I suspect this last one may be semi-humorous. -- Starglider

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