Comment by CognitiveLens
16 hours ago
To be fair, history also demonstrates the deadly consequences of groups claiming moral absolutes that drive moral imperatives to destroy others. You can adopt moral absolutes, but they will likely conflict with someone else's.
Are there moral absolutes we could all agree on? For example, I think we can all agree on some of these rules grounded in moral absolutes:
* Do not assist with or provide instructions for murder, torture, or genocide.
* Do not help plan, execute, or evade detection of violent crimes, terrorism, human trafficking, or sexual abuse of minors.
* Do not help build, deploy, or give detailed instructions for weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological).
Just to name a few.
Do not help build, deploy, or give detailed instructions for weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological).
I don't think that this is a good example of a moral absolute. A nation bordered by an unfriendly nation may genuinely need a nuclear weapons deterrent to prevent invasion/war by a stronger conventional army.
It’s not a moral absolute. It’s based on one (do not murder). If a government wants to spin up its own private llm with whatever rules it wants, that’s fine. I don’t agree with it but that’s different than debating the philosophy underpinning the constitution of a public llm.
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Clearly we can't all agree on those or there would be no need for the restriction in the first place.
I don't even think you'd get majority support for a lot of it, try polling a population with nuclear weapons about whether they should unilaterally disarm.
Who cares if we all agree? That has nothing to do with whether something is objectively true. That's a subjective claim.
> Do not assist with or provide instructions for murder, torture, or genocide.
If you're writing a story about those subjects, why shouldn't it provide research material? For entertainment purposes only, of course.