Debate me!

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01.23.2022 08:32PM

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01.23.2022 08:32PM

I’m looking to get back into online debate. Debate me!

The format I prefer:

Three rounds
8,000–10,000 character limit
≥ 72 hours per speech
No pre-fiat kritiks

Here’s the topics I want to debate. To copy and paste that list here:

Artificial intelligence poses a higher risk of causing human extinction than climate change. (Pro)
Central banks should replace inflation targeting with nominal GDP level targeting. (Pro)
Countries should adopt taxes on carbon emissions. (Pro)
Developing countries should engage in the large-scale redistribution of agricultural land. (Pro)
Factory farming should be illegal. (Pro)
Gentrification does more harm than good. (Con)
Governments should ban the production and sale of fur-based clothing. (Pro)
Governments should subsidize non-meat protein alternatives (e.g., plant-based meat). (Pro)
In times of widespread epidemics, governments should allow the use of “human challenge trials” to test the effectiveness of vaccines and/or treatments. (Pro)
Inclusionary zoning requirements should be abolished. (Pro)
India should pursue export-oriented development rather than Atmanirbhar Bharat (a set of policies, such as tariff increases, aimed at making the Indian economy self-reliant and using domestic demand to grow rather than exports). (Pro)
India should implement its proposed ban on crypto. (Con)
It would be preferable to the status quo if the sale of human organs was legal. (Pro)
Large coastal cities in the U.S. should substantially decrease regulations that curtail the development of market-rate housing. (Pro)
The U.S. should ban fracking. (Con)
The U.S. should substantially reduce restrictions on legal immigration to the United States. (Pro)
The benefits of urbanization in India outweigh the harms. (Pro)
Widespread price controls should be adopted as a response to high inflation. (Con)

#2

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01.23.2022 11:25PM

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01.23.2022 11:25PM

Factory farming should be illegal. (Pro)

This is your dumbest opinion. I might be interested in at least talking about it with you

#3

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01.23.2022 11:31PM

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@Wylted

It is not his dumbest opinion at all. Talk to me about it.

I am not sitting on a super high horse, though I can tell you that as I educated myself on the horrors and got more serious, I believe most of what I'm buying from now is semi-ethical at least.

#4

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01.24.2022 12:27AM

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@RationalMadman

People would literally starve and die without factory farming

Topic's author

#5

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01.24.2022 12:33AM

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@Wylted

I might be interested in at least talking about it with you.

Sure, that sounds good.

People would literally starve and die without factory farming

As long as it’s phased out, I doubt that this is true. Factory farming is generally a pretty inefficient use of resources to produce food. I’m happy to talk about my understanding of this -- which could be wrong -- in more detail.

Maybe it’s deja vu, but I vaguely recall you having this discussion with Raisor on DDO a few years ago/Raisor made the same point that I’m making.

#6

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01.24.2022 12:48AM

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@Tejretics

Maybe, I think more likely it was kbub.

As long as it’s phased out, I doubt that this is true. Factory farming is generally a pretty inefficient use of resources to produce food. I’m happy to talk about my understanding of this -- which could be wrong -- in more detail.

Are you going to argue that eliminating factory farming you could replace that with plant crops and get 4x more food or something along those lines?

#7

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01.24.2022 01:09AM

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@Wylted

How would people starve and die without it? Are you suggesting that people need meat in the first place?

#8

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01.24.2022 01:26AM

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@RationalMadman

How would people starve and die without it? Are you suggesting that people need meat in the first place?

I talked to a woman who grew up in WW2 Germany. She is dead now, but I always prodded the shit out of her for details, so I would own a piece of history that would otherwise go forgotten.

She was a sweet lady. Her brother a nazi and her husband an American soldier. Her brother and husband loved each other. The lady's name was Olga.

She described some stuff that I'm sure was hard for her to talk about and didn't talk about some things and unfortunately those things are now lost in the sands of time.

She described a large lack of meat. She didn't mention vegetables or seemed to give a shit. I don't know if fruit or vegetables were plentiful. However She couldn't get meat. She talked about a neighbor killing the horse and sharing it with her family so they wouldn't starve.

I believe though it was never stated, she caught rats and ate them as food. She came upon a crashed dead pilot in the woods and took his jacket to stay warm. She scavenged the dead body for food. I don't believe she found any.

You don't hear about these people going through extreme measures for apples. They go that length for meat.

A vegan diet is not sustainable. If you were to attempt to sustain it, I'd recommend eating a ton of oysters and insects, which are both vegan foods.

#9

gugigor

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gugigor

01.24.2022 01:35AM

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@Tejretics

Could the AI extinction debate come down to glitches potentially launching nukes, or hackers hacking AI to launch nukes? Because I can see those two kritiks coming in the way, which is problematic. It would essentially be human error which is weird.

Topic's author

#10

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01.24.2022 01:45AM

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@gugigor

I guess they could. It wouldn't be the focus of my case from Pro.

Not sure why those are kritiks, though!

#11

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01.24.2022 04:05AM

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@Tejretics

I pretty much agree with you that Ai is more likely to lead to human extinction, but I still say we should focus more on global warming than trying to prevent an AI apocalypse.

#12

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01.24.2022 04:05AM

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01.24.2022 04:05AM

Would you agree or disagree with that?

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01.24.2022 04:25AM

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@Wylted

I’m uncertain.

My guess is: More of society’s total resources should be focused on global warming, but since ensuring AI advancements don’t threaten humanity is so neglected, perhaps additional resources would be better placed in AI. I don’t have a strong view, though. Both are very important.

#14

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01.24.2022 04:30AM

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@Tejretics

My issue with that, is the institutio. Or nation that is first to create a super AI will rule the world, assuming it is controllable. If we take safety measures I to account than China could beat us to the Super AI, as they have no such problems throwing ethics out of the window to win .

I just prefer a world ruled by the west than China, and if we care too much about creating the apocypse, we'll lose. I'll happily face 26% chance of extinction, if it means I can live in a free society.

Also, a super AI will likely be able to cure death as we know it. Given that millions of people die each day, if we slow down this advancement, even by as much as 1 day. That is a million lives unnecessarily lost.

#15

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01.24.2022 01:08PM

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01.24.2022 01:08PM

I'm not going to debate you on it, but I'm fairly well read on artificial intelligence lately and I really am curious what sort of arguments you'd be making. I've read the "Reward is enough paper". I've read Silver's ATARI paper and built that AI. I mean, deep learning aside, this stuff is all 5 lines of clever code for learning, another 20 or 30 for experience replay, and whatever else supplementary, I can't quite remember. Fair enough, I haven't a clue of what's going on with CNN's and feature extraction, and it is all enormously clever and impressive - I have even read papers which would prove that humans avail of a temporal difference sort of learning - but all of that is still so far from anything that could ever be considered general intelligence. The thing plays video games. These environments are incredibly limited. Actions are always predefined. If anything, I think AGI starts at the wrong end. It's cart before the horse. Evolution has been availing of reinforcement learning (or something not altogether dissimilar) for a billion years, and with an entire world of processing power. It built action and observation spaces first. We beat Pong in 2013, moving a paddle either up or down. An action space of 2. I can't even conceive of an action space for my baby finger, at least nothing I'd be certain of. I'm fairly sure there's nothing in the science that offers the slightest cause for concern.

#16

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01.24.2022 01:24PM

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01.24.2022 01:24PM

I would suspect that humans aren't even a general intelligence, but rather innumerable competing specific intelligences. We've learned a couple of tricks from the human brain. These were architectures a billion years in the making. The world threw bodies at it. The entirety of life on earth. We beat Pong in 2013.

#17

whiteflame

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whiteflame

01.24.2022 02:52PM

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@Tejretics

In times of widespread epidemics, governments should allow the use of “human challenge trials” to test the effectiveness of vaccines and/or treatments. (Pro)

I'd consider doing this one.

#18

thett3

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01.24.2022 03:05PM

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@Tejretics

You should read this thread, I would be interested in a neoliberal perspective on this as I think the global fertility decline throws some unexpected road blocks to a lot of the policies supported by “the establishment” https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/7083-the-political-consequences-of-low-birthrates

#19

spacetime

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01.24.2022 06:37PM

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@Tejretics

The U.S. should substantially reduce restrictions on legal immigration to the United States. (Pro)

Let's do it.

Artificial intelligence poses a higher risk of causing human extinction than climate change. (Pro)

Super interested in reading this debate if it happens.

Topic's author

#20

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01.24.2022 08:05PM

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@thett3

You should read this thread, I would be interested in a neoliberal perspective on this as I think the global fertility decline throws some unexpected road blocks to a lot of the policies supported by “the establishment” https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/7083-the-political-consequences-of-low-birthrates

I’ll read it and post there later today! But for what it’s worth, in developed countries especially, I think low birthrates are concerning. I think they’re especially concerning for long-run economic growth. More people means more ideas and more technological progress, which is the path to economic growth in countries where simply “catching up” through capital accumulation is no longer possible.

I like policy proposals such as child allowances that make it easier to have kids. I also like policy proposals by liberals to lower the cost of living, like building a lot more market-rate housing. I’m uncertain about how to change culture in ways that makes having kids more widely-accepted. I also like a lot more immigration, to temporarily mitigate some of the consequences of low birthrates. It isn’t quite a permanent solution, though, and it doesn’t fix the problem at its root.

I think the picture in developing countries is a bit more complicated, because the relevant question is how it affects catch-up growth. India’s TFR looks likely to drop below replacement by 2030, which seems like losing an important “demographic dividend” to engage in labor-intensive manufacturing, which is scary. On the other hand, there’s some research – such as this one, by David Weil and others – suggesting that increases in population density hurt people’s quality of life in developing countries.

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#21

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01.24.2022 08:41PM

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@spacetime

Let's do it.

Sure. I'll send you a challenge.

Looking forward to it!

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#22

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01.24.2022 08:54PM

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@whiteflame

I’d love to!

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#23

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01.24.2022 08:59PM

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@Wylted

My issue with that, is the institutio. Or nation that is first to create a super AI will rule the world, assuming it is controllable. If we take safety measures I to account than China could beat us to the Super AI, as they have no such problems throwing ethics out of the window to win .

That’s quite reasonable. But I don’t think resources spent on averting an AI-related catastrophe has to involve slowing its development in the U.S. down. For example, I’d consider supporting things like export restrictions on semiconductor parts to China in order to slow down AI development there.

I’m uncertain how I feel about the pace of AI progress. I share your concerns about China developing an AGI first.

Also, a super AI will likely be able to cure death as we know it. Given that millions of people die each day, if we slow down this advancement, even by as much as 1 day. That is a million lives unnecessarily lost.

I think averting an existential catastrophe is probably more important in expected value. I’m unclear how much slowing down AGI would slow down anti-aging research (though I do think anti-aging research is important).

#24

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https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

01.24.2022 09:51PM

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@Tejretics

I think averting an existential catastrophe is probably more important in expected value. I’m unclear how much slowing down AGI would slow down anti-aging research (though I do think anti-aging research is important

Because of something known as the technological singularity. Even AGI would contribute to anti aging research, but once AGI leads to a super AI, the changes we see could be 100 year jumps in technological advancement occur within seconds.

That is where the danger lies with AI also. AGI or as I call it human level AI, isn't going to have God like powers of mind, but once AI gets to the point where it improves itself, those improvements can happen very rapidly, and you will see intelligence that rivals God. That is where the danger comes in. Human level AI will bring some interesting challenges, but even the negative effects of that are unlikely to cause a human extinction.

The dangers with super AI can. It is interesting that a lot of the reasons for the "Fermi paradox" can be directly attributed to possible reactions to a singularity. The singularity like the development of nuclear weapons acts as a filter for advanced civilizations. Many advanced planetary civilizations are likely to die off once they reach a nuclear age.

If we are to enter the age of super intelligence, than that can be another filter. I don't see AGI being a filter. So this to give you an ideal that super intelligence works as such a rapid level of advancement that it essentially also acts like a curtain that blinds us to what the future will look like.

So if you plan to debate the dangers if AGI, I urge you to look past that at super AI. Even this low level of AI that we currently have, but is close to AGI, has contributed a lot to extending lifespan already. For example AI has made it possible to detect cancer significantly earlier, particularly breast cancer and are better at detecting it than any human.

Imagine how much a God like intelligence can improve tech

#25

Dr.Franklin

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01.24.2022 10:13PM

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@Tejretics

@Wylted

You guys might find this article interesting, as well as the whole website.

"So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress"

#26

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01.24.2022 10:34PM

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@Wylted

For example AI has made it possible to detect cancer significantly earlier, particularly breast cancer and are better at detecting it than any human.

Apparently the false positive rate is through the roof rendering it fairly useless. So I've heard anyway. I looked it up but it was way too many words on a computer screen for this late at night.

#27

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01.24.2022 10:57PM

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01.24.2022 10:57PM

That's also baby AI, supervised, and not even thinking about general. The new reinforcement learning stuff is what's aspiring to a general intelligence. The idea is that if we're not training our models on labelled datasets we're learning general things. But not really. We're still feeding it the reward. It's just that little bit more loosey-goosey.

#28

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