2026-03-11

minor edit 2026-03-12

# My values seem to be honesty and violence

Disclaimer
 - **Quick Note**
 - **Contains politically sensitive info**
 - Speaking aloud. May not endorse this after lot of thought
 - target audience - strictly myself

Main
 - quoting this again from [previous document](./yet_another_dump_of_confusion_around_my_morality.md):

> Are you willing to kill your friends if you knew for a fact that doing so would save billions of lives including your own? Would you be willing to kill AI company CEOs if they were your friends?

 - See also: [Naval Ravikant on ethics, self-esteem and being long-term greedy](https://nav.al/intelligence-energy-integrity)
 - I actually buy this statement:

> If somebody screws over an enemy, and is vindictive towards them, well it’s only a matter of time before they redefine you from friend to enemy, and you feel their wrath. So, angry, outraged, vindictive, short-term thinking people are essentially that way in many interactions in real life.

> People are oddly consistent. That’s one of the things you learn about them. So, you want to find long-term people. You want to find people who seem irrationally ethical.

 - If today, I am considering assassinating AI company CEOs as a plan, tomorrow I will also consider assassinating my friends, if they became AI company CEOs.
 - If today, I am considering leaking info about AI company CEOs to make them look bad, tomorrow I will also consider leaking info about my friends to make them look bad, if they became AI company CEOs.
 - And like, this seems straightforwardly true? My first loyalty is to my ideology, it is not to any person in this world. Why does this make me feel uncomfortable if it is true?
 - Why do I find it easier to empathise with people running the AI companies, than I find it easy to empathise with most normal people? This is definitely an important part of why this makes me uncomfortable. Maybe not most important, but atleast somewhat important.
 - Intrinsically I still seem to care atleast a bit about fairness and symmetry. Rationally, I think the only thing that matters is Might makes Right. Technological offence-defence balances shape everything, not human feelings.
   - It is true that there is no efficient market for life strategies. Just because I don't cyberattack, doesn't make it inevitable that someone else will.
   - This is not the core part of the issue. Fairness would mean some people deserve to be attacked, and others don't deserve it.
   - What I instrinsically feel is that nobody deserves to be attacked. But I am not sure you can win a zero-sum political battle this way.
   - What are even the fair rules for warfare? Lmao. The other side has broken all the rules already. Why should I be a chump who follows all the rules?
   - Most of the people around who follow rules seem incredibly naive. Especially those who follow the law, and not even some internal moral code. An internal moral code I atleast seem to have more respect for. People following the law are the biggest losers.
 - **Honestly I think I should schedule calls with some of my friends and ask them this.**
 - Why is there so much ambient hate in my socioeconomic class, for the upper class? Why is it considered so acceptable to hurt the upper class (for instrumental political reasons), but not acceptable to hurt members of your own class (for the same reasons). My intuitions seem to differ from other people atleast a little here.
 - I love the upper class. Truly, I do. Like, they make a lot of bad decisions, sure, but I still like a lot of them as people.
 - They think about things a lot more deeply than the average person, and for that I respect them. That is what Actually Trying looks like. Most people in my class are losers who aren't Actually Trying to do anything of value with their life.
 - Ugh, I wish Naval would write something of value aimed at actual politicians. "High-integrity politics is not possible" is such a lame belief. I mean, I would be very surprised if it was true.


redaction
 - Let's imagine I applied the same redaction policy to my friends:
   - I would leak info about them breaking democratic safeguards
   - I would leak info about them committing personal abuse (such as rape)
   - I would leak info about them bribing or threatening media houses (i.e. more of their friends) to stay quiet about what they are doing
   - I would leak info about them supporting human extinction
 - I find this hard to imagine because most of my friends have no actual power, and no one (often not even me) gives a flying shit what their opinions are. Who cares if one of my friends supports extinction.
 - I guess yeah, opinions nobody cares about, but what about actions? What if they were actively working on bioweapons? Would I leak that? What if they were building ASI? Would I leak that?
 - Why does "ASI" still have positive vibes associated in discourse, as compared to bioweapons? Why do nuclear weapons have more neutral vibes? Like, if one of my friends was working on nuclear research, it's just assumed that is neutral vibes.
 - Or maybe I just associated neutral vibes, because I know how boring nuclear research actually is. I'm sure some people consider that scary too.
 - Actually to be blunt, if one of my friends was running a secret ASI project, yes I would leak that to the public, and be prepared for a fight with them because I know it's coming.

update
 - ran this against the disagreements app - will write longer criticisms later, but short version is just:
   - Holy fuck I am not the only one confused about morality, almost everyone I listed is confused about morality. Almost everyone thinking deeply agrees that morality is confusing.
   - A lot of people in the app are pro-Englightenment or pro-free speech or pro-rule of law etc, and hence seem to have inclincations against even one-off moves that break these.
   - As I predicted, getting on a moral high ground (like stallman) gets you more people power but less hard power, and willing to compromise more (like assange) actually gets more hard power. I have to remind myself that nearly everyone on this list ultimately failed at big picture goals like ensure US IC is accountable, or reduce inequality (lol, lmao), or whatever other big goal they started out.
   - Getting on a moral high ground also makes you feel better about yourself, but only a couple of people like Naval or PG have actual evidence to show that this gets you hard power.
   - **I need to add more politicians to this list of people in the disagreements app.**
   - Otto van Bismarck's review is atleast honest about the social costs of thinking like a politician, before you have actual politician-level power.
   - **A lot of these bloggers are not explicitly calculating social / legitimacy costs atleast in their public writing.** They don't explicitly say things like, if I do action X, I'll get social pushback but more hard power, but if I do action Y, I'll get more social support but less hard power.
   - **Very important - I need more access to inside-view thinking of politicians, not the public face they present.**