On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 10:01 PM Falsifian via agora-discussion
<agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
> > {
> > Title: Personhood
> > Adoption index: 3.0
> > Author: Aris
> > Co-authors: Trigon, nix, G., Jason, ATMunn
> >
> >
> > Amend Rule 869, "How to Join and Leave Agora", by replacing:
> >
> > Any entity that is or ever was an organism generally capable of
> > freely originating and communicating independent thoughts and
> > ideas is a person. Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, no other
> > entities are persons.
> >
> > with:
> >
> > Every intelligence is a person. A group of intelligences may also
> > elect to form a single person, as long as each intelligence only plays as
> > one person at a time; this provision shall be interpreted
> > with deference towards the good-faith of the parties and the customs of
> > honorable play. Additionally, a former person is always considered a
> > person.
> > Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, only the entities
> > described above are persons.
> > }
> >
> > In particular, "this provision shall be interpreted with deference
> > towards the good-faith of the parties and the customs of honorable
> > play." helps defuse a lot of the potential problems that might
> > otherwise arise.
> >
> >
> > -Aris
>
> "A former person is always considered a person"
>
> Weren't there times (before I joined) in the past where the definition
> of "person" was really broad? E.g. I heard about something called "The
> Pineapple Partnership" being a person. Would this clause make The
> Pineapple Partnership into a person again?
Uhh, that may be a problem, yes.
> "Every intelligence is a person."
>
> Is a chatbot an intelligence? I worry that "intelligence" may be more
> broad than we want.
The OED entry I was going for "An intelligent or rational being, esp.
a spiritual one, or one alien to mankind". But, like, obviously not
the especially portion of that, just the whole thing. I think "an
intelligence" at least implies something that has around the same
level of intelligence as a human. The other wording that was
considered was "natural person", but it's clumsy in the sentence and
potentially excludes too many things.
> "...with deference toward the good-faith..."
>
> Something about good-faith is a great idea. I wonder if we should be a
> bit more specific, though; someone coming upon this out of the blue may
> not understand what kind of behaviour this is trying to mark as taboo,
> and so may in good faith treat this rule in a way we don't want.
>
> ***
>
> What about something narrower:
>
> * Insert "or part of an organism", as in "Any entity that is or ever
> was an organism, or a part of an organism, generally capable..." etc.
> Maybe there is a better wording.
>
> * And then add a good-faith clause, but more specific than Aris's: the
> person must in good faith consider emself to have an independent
> identity.
Keep in mind, this is modifying the portion on multi-persons, not the
earlier standard of personhood. So this only applies to when multiple
people want to be treated as one person, the portion reading "A group
of intelligences may also elect to form a single person, as long as
each intelligence only plays as one person at a time" (though we could
consider expanding it to apply to the whole paragraph).
The clause is intended to allow for equitable license in
interpretation of this one specific provision. If someone finds a way
that multi-persons interact with the rest of the rules that is
abusive, it is intended to give the judiciary some license to go
"That's abusive, and I'm going to read the rule in a way that won't
let you get away with it". By the same token, it permits judges to
interpret the behavior of specific multi-persons in a way that is
consistent with the equities of their cases. It's helpful because
we've found in discussions that the behavior of multi-persons are just
way too hard to specify, due to the complexities of interacting with
the real world and the different ways in which the provision might be
used. We want to allow the judiciary to work out the details, like
they do for fora, except maybe giving even a bit more license to
consider equity.
I think your solutions are trying to address a problem that doesn't
really exist. Me pretending to be someone else is not in any
meaningful sense a separate intelligence than me. The situations where
you have actually meaningfully separate intelgences/persons are
already the ones we want to target.
-Aris
