This article argues that — despite the value of distinguishing between insiders and outsiders in a contingent and relative sense — there is no fundamental insider—outsider problem. We distinguish weak and strong versions of 'insiderism' (privileged versus monopolistic access to knowledge) and then sociological and religious versions of the latter. After reviewing critiques of the sociological version, we offer a holistic semantic critique of the religious version (i.e. the view that religious experience and/or language offers sui generis access to knowledge). (...) We argue that all evidence for mental states is overt, public, and observable, and, hence, that there can be no significant difference in the access to knowledge of insiders and outsiders. (shrink)

Two theses are proposed; regarding the future evolution of the value systems of advanced AGI systems. The Value Learning Thesis is a semi-formalized version of the idea that; if an AGI system is taught human values in an interactive and experiential way as its intelligence increases toward human level; it will likely adopt these human values in a genuine way. The Value Evolution Thesis is a semi-formalized version of the idea that if an AGI system begins with human-like values; and (...) then iteratively modifies itself; it will end up in roughly the same future states as a population of human beings engaged with progressively increasing their own intelligence. Taken together; these theses suggest a worldview in which raising young AGIs to have human-like values is a sensible thing to do; and likely to produce a future that is generally desirable in a human sense. While these two theses are far from definitively proven; I argue that they are more solid and more relevant to the actual future of AGI than Bostrom’s “Instrumental Convergence Thesis” and “Orthogonality Thesis” which are core to the basis of his argument for fearing ongoing AGI development and placing AGI R&D under strict governmental control. In the context of fleshing out this argument; previous publications and discussions by Richard Loosemore and Kaj Sotala are discussed in some detail. (shrink)