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by zardo 3171 days ago
Intelligence and ethical behavior are orthogonal. You can expect a super-intelligence to develop a super-understanding of ethics. That does not imply ethical behavior.
1 comments

Why do you think they're orthogonal though? Empirically, it seems like smarter humans are more ethical. Same seems true of high intelligence vs low intelligence animals too.
Orthogonal is exaggerating, I'll agree that the angle may not be exactly 90 degrees, but it's nearer that than 0.

>Empirically, it seems like smarter humans are more ethical. "Seems" deserves some emphasis. Who is more likely to wind up in handcuffs, a smart thief, or a dumb one?

>Same seems true of high intelligence vs low intelligence animals too.

It's not exactly clear what constitutes ethics in animals. Applying typical human ethics; Chimpanzees have murdered their social rivals, and dolphins sometimes enjoy tormenting other animals.

What makes you think smarter humans are more ethical? It certainly not always the case. There are smart sociopaths and criminals. Smart people made a world with thousands of nukes in it.
That would be for you to demonstrate, but even if we accept it to be true for the sake of a discussion, it is not relevant, because there is no reason to believe a non-human intelligence would choose to accept those ethical percepts that humans would prefer.
Unless humanity's level of ethics derive from our level of intelligence. In which case, our only complain would be that we're too stupid to understand its superior ethics.

The same way a dog might not understand the ethics of a doctor injecting life-saving medicine into it. The doctor is acting super ethically but cannot explain it to the dog.

We are under no logical obligation to accept that the ethics of entities that can outsmart us are superior, even if your premise is correct - and as that premise itself is merely speculative at this point, it would be wise to be prudent.