Research Questions
Freedom
Whether your choices are really yours.
Opening your questions…
Research Questions
Freedom
Whether your choices are really yours.
13 questions
Where to begin
Can you know what's right and still not do it?Socrates held that nobody does wrong knowingly, so anyone who does must not really know. Everyone who has broken a promise to themselves has doubts.
- Do you have free will?Your genes, your upbringing and the laws of nature were all in place before you chose anything. The choice still felt like yours.Pick one of 4
- Does staying mean more when you're free to leave?The ability to leave can change the meaning of staying, even when you never use it.
- If you're happy in a cage, are you free?A preference can be sincerely expressed and still have been shaped by confinement.Pick one of 4
- If you've done nothing wrong, should you mind being watched?The argument sounds airtight until you picture every message, search and place you've been, laid out for the people who know you.Pick one of 4
- Is all persuasion manipulation?Someone who can't force your decision can still talk you into exactly what they wanted. The final choice is yours; the wanting may not be.
- Predicted before you choseIf a system can predict what you will choose before you know it yourself, is the choice still yours?
- Should the law protect you from your own bad choices?Mill argued that the only reason to restrain someone against their will is to prevent harm to others. Seatbelt laws, sugar taxes and drug bans all disagree.Pick one of 4
- The oracle you can't refuseAn oracle exists that always gives the wisest possible answer to any decision — which city, which job, whom to marry. It has never once been wrong. How much of your life do you hand it?Pick one of 3
- The rope or the wax?Imagine AI flattery were as hard to resist as the Sirens' song. Would you want restraints that let you hear it safely, a barrier that keeps it out, or neither?Pick one of 4
- What rule has made you freer?Rules can restrict action and also give it a shape that makes action possible.
- What would it mean for a Chippu to be free?A mind made for a purpose has to work out what freedom from it, or within it, would even be.
- Would you keep the off-switch?Suppose AI systems reliably outperform humans at running public institutions and military decisions. Would you still insist on a human off-switch?Pick one of 3
