But I don't get why we don't view an observation of events we caused, which another person doesn't like, as an attack.
I think for an individual who is skilled enough about what stuff is theirs (what stuff they (and only they) can observe; what stuff they (and only they) can control), and what stuff isn't theirs, then they would not register this as an attack.
In practice, though, I think many people are bad at this skill, and so when they hear someone say "(You're doing a bad thing!)", they interpret this not as just a remark that is coming from somew...
Thank you for compiling this! I've been working with a counselor for the past year using basically this method with great results, though I've only found this book and post today. Great to see support for the idea
Related (H/T @Roman Leventov - comment):
Dalton Sakthivadivel showed here that boundaries (i.e., sparse couplings) do exist and are "ubiqutuous" in high-dimensional (i.e., complex) systems.
I think that boundaries […] is an undeniably important concept that is usable for inferring ethical behaviour. But I don't think a simple "winning" deontology is derivable from this concept.
I see
I'm currently preparing an article where I describe that from the AI engineering perspective, deontology, virtue ethics, and consequentialism
please lmk when you post this. i've subscribed to your lw posts too
FWIW, I don't think the examples given necessarily break «membranes» as a "winning" deontological theory.
...A surgeon intruding into the boundaries of a patient i
Okay, I'll try to summarize your main points. Please let me know if this is right
Have I missed anything? I'll respond after you confirm.
Also, would you please share any key example(s) of #2?
Do you think this relates to «Boundaries» for formalizing a bare-bones morality ?
this world where people successfully adapt to superintelligent AI services is a totalitarian police state
& Davidad's Night Watchman
Some number of the examples in this post don't make sense to me. For example, where is the membrane in "work/life balance"? Or, where is the membrane in "personal space" (see Duncan's post, which is linked).
I think there's a thing that is "social boundaries", which is like preferences— and there's also a thing like "informational or physical membranes", which happens to use the same word "boundaries", but is much more universal than preferences. Personally, I think these two things are worth regarding as separate concepts.
Personally, I like to think about ...
I realize that none of my posts so far have expressed why I'm so excited about «membranes/boundaries»; I haven't spoken about the problems that this has actually helped me with.
It's not so surprising: I've been writing that post for a long time (since January, actually), and I've had a few major rewrites in the past 6 weeks alone. I'm glad that I've written some general «membranes» content already, but I think it's time to focus on writing the real post.
FWIW, I think a morality based on minimizing «membrane/boundary»[1] violations could possibly avoid the issues outlined here. That is, a form of deontology where the rule is ~"respect the «membranes/boundaries» of sovereign agents". (And I think this works because I think «membranes/boundaries» are universally observable.)
Relevant posts:
To be clear, I think the bare-bones morality in that post comes from "observe boundaries and then try not to violate them" (or, in Davidad's case: and then proactively defend them (which is stronger)).
I'll need to think about the rest of your comment more, hm. If you think of examples please lmk:)
Also, wdym that a logical dependency could be itself a membrane? Eg?
One thing— I think the «membranes/boundaries» generator would probably reject the "you get to choose worlds" premise, for that choice is not within your «membrane/boundary». Instead, there's...
oooo, that's interesting! maximal abstraction… *membranes all the way down...*
I do like this, I'll have to think about it more. Another thing this makes me realize that I like about this is that it requires no privileged perspective: you don't actually know that anything is an agent (just like reality— solipism— etc.)— all you know is that there are membranes and things you can't control…
I already think that trying to control fate is a membrane/boundary violation just as trying to control another sovereign agent is a membrane/boundary violation, and this w...
Today I've added a link to my current research questions for «membranes/boundaries», and also fixed the headers
I do think that some people mean something more like an actively defended border when talking about their social boundaries
To be clear, I don't think social requirements and membranes are unrelated. Actually, I think for anyone who is sufficiently conscious, if you violate (or attempt to violate) their «membranes/boundaries», then they will treat that as a violation of their social requirements (colloquial 'boundaries'). In the limit of courage, there is that convergence.
...I think they are trying to say that they have drawn social lines in the sand, wh
Just in case you haven't seen it: «Boundaries/Membranes» and AI safety compilation, «Boundaries» for formalizing a bare-bones morality. But you seem to be talking about this as a membrane insulating cognition, which is something I haven't thought of before... it's an interesting idea i think, i don't know what to make of it. Do let me know if you get more thoughts on it:)
I intend to take a closer look at this later, but I think you'd be interested in «Boundaries» for formalizing a bare-bones morality, where I talk about the uses of «boundaries/membranes» for creating a consistent-and-also-not-arbitrary form of deontology. And I'd be very interested in hearing your takes on it
Update: see my new comment
but it sounds a lot like what is between a system and its environment
yes. and i think i particularly mean this to mean only boundaries that are 'natural' in some way. probably homeostatic/self-maintaining.
Looked at ChatGPT blurb- Yes this seems extremely related. Thank you, I wasn't aware of his work and i'll have to look into it! Let me know if you do think of any good resources
these "differences" might be the rules, norms, or social structures that separate one social system
this i might disagree with a little. Ie: I wouldn't call the "difference" of a ce...
Today I've slightly updated the post to reflect what I think will be less-confusing terminology for this concept going forward.
The happiest people were the ones who got their results over email, which is a HIPAA violation the company claims to have done by accident
this might not be true? it seems ok if patient requests
but what does
our viscera, which has now flowed outside our boundary.
mean?
Could you give a concrete example?
the object obviously has a viscera that’s outside the boundary
I'm not following you here— 'viscera' is defined to be what's within the boundary, no?
Also, what does it mean for the viscera to have different 'shapes'?
I've compiled all of the current «Boundaries» x AI safety thinking and research (like this post) that I could find here: «Boundaries» and AI safety compilation.
(E.g.: Davidad connected this post to moral patienthood on twitter)
I've compiled all of the current «Boundaries» x AI safety thinking and research (like this post) that I could find here: «Boundaries» and AI safety compilation
I've compiled all of the current «Boundaries» x AI safety thinking and research I could find in this post: «Boundaries» and AI safety compilation. Also see: «Boundaries» for formalizing a bare-bones morality which relates to scoped consequentialism
...
- Deontic Sufficiency Hypothesis: There exists a human-understandable set of features of finite trajectories in such a world-model, taking values in , such that we can be reasonably confident that all these features being near 0 implies high probability of existential safety, and such that saturating them at 0 is feasible[2] with high probability, using scientifically-accessible technologies.
- I am optimistic about this largely because of recent progress toward formalizing a natural abstraction of boundaries by Critch and Garrabrant. I find it
I've compiled most if not all of everything Davidad has said about «boundaries» (which are mentioned in this post insofar as "deontic feasibility hypothesis" and "elicitors") to date here: «Boundaries and AI safety compilation. Also see: «Boundaries» for formalizing a bare-bones morality
Ok, I will rename the tag from "«Boundaries»" to "Boundaries [technical]". Fwiw I consider both strings as referring to the same concept, but I see how it might be weird to use «».
I believe I'm abiding by the definition inherent to his sequence, but anyone is free to convince me otherwise.
(Please also let me know if I've violated some norm about naming conventions.)
I've decided to use "«boundaries»" instead of "boundaries" because "boundaries" colloquially refers to something that's more like "Hey you crossed my boundaries, you're so mean!" (see this post for examples), and while I think that these two concepts are related, I find them extraordinarily confusing to consider simultaneously (because "crossing 'boundaries'" does not imp...
Here are some more posts which might be also related, but less obviously so. I will leave them in this comment for now, but feel free to argue me into including or excluding any of these.
[APPRENTICE]
I'm looking for someone to mentor me specifically w.r.t. «Boundaries» (or, similarly: Cartesian Frames). I'm interested in this both for AI safety (I have a draft compilation post on this that I will be posting in the next few days, or else I'd share it here), and also as a rationality technique. I'm interested in doing research on and/or distillation for this.
Cartesian boundaries are not real
I disagree with this. This has recently been formalized in Andrew Critch's «Boundaries» Sequence. E.g.: «Boundaries», Part 3a: Defining boundaries as directed Markov blankets.
...Boundaries include things like a cell membrane, a fence around yard, and a national border; see Part 1. In short, a boundary is going to be something that separates the inside of a living system from the outside of the system. More fundamentally, a living system or organism will be defined as
- a) a part of the world, with
- b) a subsystem called
Thanks for writing this! This is very closely related to Andrew Critch's «Boundaries» Sequence, 2022. Part 3a formalizes boundaries in terms of Markov blankets, and leakage in terms of conditional mutual information.
I've also expanded on such leakage ("infiltration and exfiltration") in my post my conceptualizations of infiltration and exfiltration from the «Boundaries» Sequence
I updated the post to add two more examples of exfiltration: one pertaining to BATNAs, and one pertaining to energy/heat loss.
And I added a visualization of agents as blobs.
Maintaining Boundaries is about Maintaining Free Will and Privacy
I really like this conceptualization! Especially "privacy". I've written a post about the finer details of this wrt to infiltration and exfiltration.
Here’s a peak at how I summarize this at the end:
I think your comment is mostly relevant and lays out, mechanistically, how speculating about what someone else is thinking can lead to trying to control them (a sovereignty violation); i.e.: from exfiltration to infiltration.
Also—
I was having trouble understanding infiltration and exfiltration conceptually, but I think I made some progress and I wrote a post about my conceptualizations.
Here’s a peak at how I summarize this at the end:
1. Expansive thinking
Consider a fictional person named Alex. A "job" for Alex is a scope of affairs (features of the world) that Alex is considered responsible for observing and handling. Alex might have multiple roles that we can think of as jobs, e.g. "office manager", "husband", "neighbor".
I somewhat disagree with how this section is presented so I wrote a post about it and proposed a compromise.
In summary:
IME the process outlined in this book is absolutely right. However, one piece of the framework seems weird to me: it seems to suggests that emotions are the cause of schemas/beliefs:
This doesn't match my intuitions… imo, more like this: beliefs are the cause of emotions. Where do 'intense emotions' come from?
Maybe emotions are best thought as doing 'prioritization' or serving other essential function, but I don't think they're the bottom.