The main thing driving human behavior which is nearly always brushed off as reductionest and replaced with all the musings fo centuries of philosophy and psychology is every living animal, humans being at the top of the list are primarily focused on not suffering and dying, not having their loved ones suffer and die. Thats it bottom line. Sure we can come up with endless thoughts in and around the fact but that only serves to muddy the waters.

There is one way and one way only that humans have to address this primary motivation and that is money.

There I have laid it out clear and simple. I am sure I will get lots of criticism but no one can disprove it,

So how does AI deal with that? 

Interesting and highly relevant post. I had these thoughts also about 5 or 6 years ago when my in-depth, highly researched and annotated pieces were not being read or shared but my quick comments were being shared...alot.

I believe there is the obvious "Overtons window" element, people just don't want to feel ignorant.So I started to form quick comments that might open that window a crack then provide a link to the deeper post. I did have some success with this tactic but still only a certain type of person is interested in opening that window all the way (and not jump out).

I understand the mechanisms of your metaphor and while they are undeniable they are also, IMO overly simplistic and not helpful as it leaves out the most important element of willpower.

Just like freewill, willpower implies making a decision then using your "freewill" or willpower to act on it. Willpower, as with freewill, is meaningless without making a conscious and preferably well informed decision. 

Regardless of living or dead if you do not have reasonably accurate and somewhat complete info aka less wrong-ish its a crapshoot as to the outcome. 

I posit that humans in general and Americans and most Europeans too have been so thoroughly and consistently lied to that any discussion of willpower or freewill is moot. 

What IS being shut down or weeded out is truth, right and wrong, reality, critical thinking, honesty, and on and on, without which we all loose our ability to make good decisions.

I don't know how our species can overcome this but IOM nothing else matters until we do.

Most scary thing for me regarding AI is the simple fact that what constitutes modern human history is mostly lies repeated over and over, especially concentrated in the last 50+ years. With this in mind what exactly is AI being trained on and aligned to?

If it can't discern truth from lies we are phucked.

If it can discern truth from lies we are phucked.

Competition is bad! Ooooh thats going to get some goats. Competition is only legitimate when there are true shortages of necessary things, in other words when times are in crisis. This does occur in nature obviously and we as humans have observed it.  A dog will indeed eat a dog but only in extreme conditions.  The problem is that we then optimized and structured civilization in favor of that behavior. 

Humans do not need that kind of motivation in order to do all of the wonderful things we are capable of. Competition elicits all of humanities worst behavior such as greed, envy, avarice, cheating, killing….

We know that humans are capable of such behavior but we are also Homo sapiens sapiens, we put the term “wise” in there twice which means we should try and act that way.