Overcoming Bias

Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?

Following the announcement last week that Oxford University’s controversial Biomedical Sciences building is now complete and will be open for business in mid-2009, the ethical issues surrounding the use of animals for scientific experimentation have been revisited in the media—see, for example, here , here, and here.

The number of animals used per year in scientific experiments worldwide has been estimated at 200 million—well in excess of the population of Brazil and over three times that of the United Kingdom. If we take the importance of an ethical issue to depend in part on how many subjects it affects, then, the ethics of animal experimentation at the very least warrants consideration alongside some of the most important issues in this country today, and arguably exceeds them in importance. So, what is being done to address this issue?

In the media, much effort seems to be devoted to discrediting concerns about animal suffering and reassuring people that animals used in science are well cared for, and relatively little effort is spent engaging with the ethical issues. However, it seems likely that no amount of reassurance about primate play areas and germ-controlled environments in Oxford’s new research lab will allay existing concerns about the acceptability of, for example, inducing heart failure in mice or inducing Parkinson’s disease in monkeys—particularly since scientists are not currently required to report exactly how much suffering their experiments cause to animals. Given the suffering involved, are we really sure that experimenting on animals is ethically justifiable?

In attempting to answer this question, it is disturbing to note some inconsistencies in popular views of science. Consider, for example, that by far the most common argument in favour of animal experimentation is that it is an essential part of scientific progress. As Oxford's oft-quoted Professor Alastair Buchan reminds us, ‘You can’t make a head injury in a dish, you can’t create a stroke in a test tube, you can’t create a heart attack on a chip: it just doesn’t work’. Using animals, we are told, is essential if science is to progress. Since many people are apparently convinced by this argument, they must therefore believe that scientific progress is something worthwhile—that, at the very least, its value outweighs the suffering of experimental animals. And yet, at the same time, we are regularly confronted with the conflicting realisation that, far from viewing science as a highly valuable and worthwhile pursuit, the public is often disillusioned and exasperated with science. Recently, for example, people have expressed bafflement that scientists have spent time and money on seemingly trifling projects—such as working out the best way to swat a fly and discovering why knots form—and on telling us things that we already know: that getting rid of credit cards helps us spend less money, and that listening to very loud music can damage hearing. Why, when the public often seems to despair of science, do so many people appear to be convinced that scientific progress is so important that it justifies the suffering of millions of animals?

Lawful Creativity

Previously in Series:  Recognizing Intelligence

Creativity, we've all been told, is about Jumping Out Of The System, as Hofstadter calls it (JOOTSing for short).  Questioned assumptions, violated expectations.

Fire is dangerous: the rule of fire is to run away from it.  What must have gone through the mind of the first hominid to domesticate fire?  The rule of milk is that it spoils quickly and then you can't drink it - who first turned milk into cheese?  The rule of computers is that they're made with vacuum tubes, fill a room and are so expensive that only corporations can own them.  Wasn't the transistor a surprise...

Who, then, could put laws on creativity?  Who could bound it, who could circumscribe it, even with a concept boundary that distinguishes "creativity" from "not creativity"?  No matter what system you try to lay down, mightn't a more clever person JOOTS right out of it?  If you say "This, this, and this is 'creative'" aren't you just making up the sort of rule that creative minds love to violate?

Why, look at all the rules that smart people have violated throughout history, to the enormous profit of humanity.  Indeed, the most amazing acts of creativity are those that violate the rules that we would least expect to be violated.

Is there not even creativity on the level of how to think?  Wasn't the invention of Science a creative act that violated old beliefs about rationality?  Who, then, can lay down a law of creativity?

But there is one law of creativity which cannot be violated...

Inner Goodness

Followup to:  Which Parts Are "Me"?, Effortless Technique

A recent conversation with Michael Vassar touched on - or to be more accurate, he patiently explained to me - the psychology of at least three (3) different types of people known to him, who are evil and think of themselves as "evil".  In ascending order of frequency:

The first type was someone who, having concluded that God does not exist, concludes that one should do all the things that God is said to dislike.  (Apparently such folk actually exist.)

The third type was someone who thinks of "morality" only as a burden - all the things your parents say you can't do - and who rebels by deliberately doing those things.

The second type was a whole 'nother story, so I'm skipping it for now.

This reminded me of a topic I needed to post on:

Beware of placing goodness outside.

This specializes to e.g. my belief that ethicists should be inside rather than outside a profession: that it is futile to have "bioethicists" not working in biotech, or futile to think you can study Friendly AI without needing to think technically about AI.

But the deeper sense of "not placing goodness outside" was something I first learned at age ~15 from the celebrity logician Raymond Smullyan, in his book The Tao Is Silent, my first introduction to (heavily Westernized) Eastern thought.

Michael Vassar doesn't like this book.  Maybe because most of the statements in it are patently false?

But The Tao Is Silent still has a warm place reserved in my heart, for it was here that I first encountered such ideas as:

Do you think of altruism as sacrificing one's own happiness for the sake of others, or as gaining one's happiness through the happiness of others?

Which Parts Are "Me"?

Everything I am, is surely my brain; but I don't accept everything my brain does, as "me".

Though I don't like the fact, it does seem in my case to be true, that reflecting upon a passion can diminish it.  It does seem that in taking a step back from myself to look at what my brain is doing, that this introduces a greater emotional distance from the world, than when I am not reflecting.  Though I am extremely cautious when it comes to the moral issue of how to modify human nature, this is one thing that I would change, I think.

The point at which you start thinking that not everything that goes on your brain is to be identified with "you", is something of a Rubicon, I fear.  And those who prize the intensity of a simple passionate existence, above success in life or a complex layered personality, should not cross that Rubicon.

(Though in this case you should accept advice from rationalists about practical policies for guarding yourself, because this is a dangerous world in which to be unreflective.  For example: if you don't follow the link to the rest of this post, then sign the #$!@ up for cryonics regardless of what your simple passions say on the subject.)

Ethics Notes

Followup to: Ethical Inhibitions, Ethical Injunctions, Prices or Bindings?

(Some collected replies to comments on the above three posts.)

Prices or Bindings?

Followup to:  Ethical Injunctions

During World War II, Knut Haukelid and three other saboteurs sank a civilian Norwegian ferry ship, the SF Hydro, carrying a shipment of deuterium for use as a neutron moderator in Germany's atomic weapons program.  Eighteen dead, twenty-nine survivors.  And that was the end of the Nazi nuclear program.  Can you imagine a Hollywood movie in which the hero did that, instead of coming up with some amazing clever way to save the civilians on the ship?

Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt published the work of an anonymous economist turned bagelseller, Paul F., who dropped off baskets of bagels and came back to collect money from a cashbox, and also collected statistics on payment rates.  The current average payment rate is 89%.  Paul F. found that people on the executive floor of a company steal more bagels; that people with security clearances don't steal any fewer bagels; that telecom companies have robbed him and that law firms aren't worth the trouble.

Hobbes (of Calvin and Hobbes) once said:  "I don't know what's worse, the fact that everyone's got a price, or the fact that their price is so low."

If Knut Haukelid sold his soul, he held out for a damned high price - the end of the Nazi atomic weapons program.

Others value their integrity less than a bagel.

One suspects that Haukelid's price was far higher than most people would charge, if you told them to never sell out.  Maybe we should stop telling people they should never let themselves be bought, and focus on raising their price to something higher than a bagel?

But I really don't know if that's enough.

Ethical Injunctions

Followup to:  Ethical Inhibitions, Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans), Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies, Protected From Myself

"Would you kill babies if it was the right thing to do?  If no, under what circumstances would you not do the right thing to do?  If yes, how right would it have to be, for how many babies?"
        -- horrible job interview question

Swapping hats for a moment, I'm professionally intrigued by the decision theory of "things you shouldn't do even if they seem to be the right thing to do".

Suppose we have a reflective AI, self-modifying and self-improving, at an intermediate stage in the development process.  In particular, the AI's goal system isn't finished - the shape of its motivations is still being loaded, learned, tested, or tweaked.

Yea, I have seen many ways to screw up an AI goal system design, resulting in a decision system that decides, given its goals, that the universe ought to be tiled with tiny molecular smiley-faces, or some such.  Generally, these deadly suggestions also have the property that the AI will not desire its programmers to fix it.  If the AI is sufficiently advanced - which it may be even at an intermediate stage - then the AI may also realize that deceiving the programmers, hiding the changes in its thoughts, will help transform the universe into smiley-faces.

Now, from our perspective as programmers, if we condition on the fact that the AI has decided to hide its thoughts from the programmers, or otherwise act willfully to deceive us, then it would seem likely that some kind of unintended consequence has occurred in the goal system.  We would consider it probable that the AI is not functioning as intended, but rather likely that we have messed up the AI's utility function somehow.  So that the AI wants to turn the universe into tiny reward-system counters, or some such, and now has a motive to hide from us.

Well, suppose we're not going to implement some object-level Great Idea as the AI's utility function.  Instead we're going to do something advanced and recursive - build a goal system which knows (and cares) about the programmers outside.  A goal system that, via some nontrivial internal structure, "knows it's being programmed" and "knows it's incomplete".  Then you might be able to have and keep the rule:

"If [I decide that] fooling my programmers is the right thing to do, execute a controlled shutdown [instead of doing the right thing to do]."

Ethical Inhibitions

Followup to:  Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies, Evolutionary Psychology

What's up with that bizarre emotion we humans have, this sense of ethical caution?

One can understand sexual lust, parental care, and even romantic attachment.  The evolutionary psychology of such emotions might be subtler than it at first appears, but if you ignore the subtleties, the surface reasons are obvious.  But why a sense of ethical caution?  Why honor, why righteousness?  (And no, it's not group selection; it never is.)  What reproductive benefit does that provide?

The specific ethical codes that people feel uneasy violating, vary from tribe to tribe (though there are certain regularities).  But the emotion associated with feeling ethically inhibited - well, I Am Not An Evolutionary Anthropologist, but that looks like a human universal to me, something with brainware support.

The obvious story behind prosocial emotions in general, is that those who offend against the group are sanctioned; this converts the emotion to an individual reproductive advantage.  The human organism, executing the ethical-caution adaptation, ends up avoiding the group sanctions that would follow a violation of the code.  This obvious answer may even be the entire answer.

But I suggest - if a bit more tentatively than usual - that by the time human beings were evolving the emotion associated with "ethical inhibition", we were already intelligent enough to observe the existence of such things as group sanctions.  We were already smart enough (I suggest) to model what the group would punish, and to fear that punishment.

Sociopaths have a concept of getting caught, and they try to avoid getting caught.  Why isn't this sufficient?  Why have an extra emotion, a feeling that inhibits you even when you don't expect to be caught?  Wouldn't this, from evolution's perspective, just result in passing up perfectly good opportunities?

Protected From Myself

Followup to:  The Magnitude of His Own Folly, Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies

Every now and then, another one comes before me with the brilliant idea:  "Let's lie!"

Lie about what? - oh, various things.  The expected time to Singularity, say.  Lie and say it's definitely going to be earlier, because that will get more public attention.  Sometimes they say "be optimistic", sometimes they just say "lie".  Lie about the current degree of uncertainty, because there are other people out there claiming to be certain, and the most unbearable prospect in the world is that someone else pull ahead. Lie about what the project is likely to accomplish - I flinch even to write this, but occasionally someone proposes to go and say to the Christians that the AI will create Christian Heaven forever, or go to the US government and say that the AI will give the US dominance forever.

But at any rate, lie.  Lie because it's more convenient than trying to explain the truth.  Lie, because someone else might lie, and so we have to make sure that we lie first.  Lie to grab the tempting benefits, hanging just within reach -

Eh?  Ethics?  Well, now that you mention it, lying is at least a little bad, all else being equal.  But with so much at stake, we should just ignore that and lie.  You've got to follow the expected utility, right?  The loss of a lie is much less than the benefit to be gained, right?

Thus do they argue.  Except - what's the flaw in the argument?  Wouldn't it be irrational not to lie, if lying has the greatest expected utility?

When I look back upon my history - well, I screwed up in a lot of ways.  But it could have been much worse, if I had reasoned like those who offer such advice, and lied.

Traditional Capitalist Values

Followup to:  Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?, Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided

"The financial crisis is not the crisis of capitalism.  It is the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism."
        -- Nicolas Sarkozy

During the current crisis, I've more than once heard someone remarking that financial-firm CEOs who take huge bonuses during the good years and then run away when their black-swan bets blow up, are only exercising the usual capitalist values of "grab all the money you can get".

I think that a fair amount of the enmity in the world, to say nothing of confusion on the Internet, stems from people refusing to contemplate the real values of the opposition as the opposition sees it.  This is something I've remarked upon before, with respect to "the terrorists hate our freedom" or "the suicide hijackers were cowards" (statements that are sheerly silly).

Real value systems - as opposed to pretend demoniacal value systems - are phrased to generate warm fuzzies in their users, not to be easily mocked.  They will sound noble at least to the people who believe them.

Whether anyone actually lives up to that value system, or should, and whether the results are what they are claimed to be; if there are hidden gotchas in the warm fuzzy parts - sure, you can have that debate.  But first you should be clear about how your opposition sees itself - a fact which has not carefully optimized to make your side feel good about its opposition - otherwise you're not engaging the real issues.

So here are the traditional values of capitalism as seen by those who regard it as noble - the sort of Way spoken of by Paul Graham, or P. T. Barnum (who did not say "There's a sucker born every minute"), or Warren Buffett: