I wish the three recent dialog posts from you were instead written as conventional posts because they don't include abstracts/summaries or much context, it's hard to skim them to try to figure out what they are about (there are no section headings, the conversation moves from topic to topic based on how the interlocutor happens to respond instead of in some optimized way, and they have to be read as a linear dialog to make much sense), and the interlocutor often fails to ask questions that I'd like to have answered or fails to give counterarguments that I'd like to see addressed (whereas in a conventional post the author is more likely to try to anticipate more common questions/counterarguments and answer them).

For example I think if this post were written as a conventional post you probably would have clarified whether the "compromise version of Utilitarianism" is supposed to be a compromise with the NK people or with the NK government since that seems like an obvious question that a lot of people would have (and someone did ask on Facebook), as well as addressed some rather obvious problems with the proposal (whichever one you actually meant).

On merging utility functions, here's the relevant quote from Coherent Extrapolated Volition, by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Avoid creating a motive for modern-day humans to fight over the initial dynamic.

One of the occasional questions I get asked is “What if al-Qaeda programmers write an AI?” I am not quite sure how this constitutes an objection to the Singularity Institute’s work, but the answer is that the solar system would be tiled with tiny copies of the Qur’an. Needless to say, this is much more worrisome than the solar system being tiled with tiny copies of smiley faces or reward buttons. I’ll worry about terrorists writing AIs when I am through worrying about brilliant young well-intentioned university AI researchers with millions of dollars in venture capital. The outcome is exactly the same, and the academic and corporate researchers are far more likely to do it first. This is a critical point to keep in mind, as otherwise it provides an excuse to go back to screaming about politics, which feels so much more satisfying. When you scream about politics you are really making progress, according to an evolved psychology that thinks you are in a hunter-gatherer tribe of two hundred people. To save the human species you must first ignore a hundred tempting distractions.

I think the objection is that, in theory, someone can disagree about what a superintelligence ought to do. Like Dennis [sic], who thinks he ought to own the world outright. But do you, as a third party, want me to pay attention to Dennis? You can’t advise me to hand the world to you, personally; I’ll delete your name from any advice you give me before I look at it. So if you’re not allowed to mention your own name, what general policy do you want me to follow?

Let’s suppose that the al-Qaeda programmers are brilliant enough to have a realistic chance of not only creating humanity’s first Artificial Intelligence but also solving the technical side of the FAI problem. Humanity is not automatically screwed. We’re postulating some extraordinary terrorists. They didn’t fall off the first cliff they encountered on the technical side of Friendly AI. They are cautious enough and scared enough to double-check themselves. They are rational enough to avoid tempting fallacies, and extract themselves from mistakes of the existing literature. The al-Qaeda programmers will not set down Four Great Moral Principles, not if they have enough intelligence to solve the technical problems of Friendly AI. The terrorists have studied evolutionary psychology and Bayesian decision theory and many other sciences. If we postulate such extraordinary terrorists, perhaps we can go one step further, and postulate terrorists with moral caution, and a sense of historical perspective? We will assume that the terrorists still have all the standard al-Qaeda morals; they would reduce Israel and the United States to ash, they would subordinate women to men. Still, is humankind screwed?

Let us suppose that the al-Qaeda programmers possess a deep personal fear of screwing up humankind’s bright future, in which Islam conquers the United States and then spreads across stars and galaxies. The terrorists know they are not wise. They do not know that they are evil, remorseless, stupid terrorists, the incarnation of All That Is Bad; people like that live in the United States. They are nice people, by their lights. They have enough caution not to simply fall off the first cliff in Friendly AI. They don’t want to screw up the future of Islam, or hear future Muslim scholars scream in horror on contemplating their AI. So they try to set down precautions and safeguards, to keep themselves from screwing up.

One day, one of the terrorist programmers says: “Here’s an interesting thought experiment. Suppose there were an atheistic American Jew, writing a superintelligence; what advice would we give him, to make sure that even one so steeped in wickedness does not ruin the future of Islam? Let us follow that advice ourselves, for we too are sinners.” And another terrorist on the project team says: “Tell him to study the holy Qur’an, and diligently implement what is found there.” And another says: “It was specified that he was an atheistic American Jew, he’d never take that advice. The point of the Coherent Extrapolated Volition thought experiment is to search for general heuristics strong enough to leap out of really fundamental errors, the errors we’re making ourselves, but don’t know about. What if he should interpret the Qur’an wrongly?” And another says: “If we find any truly general advice, the argument to persuade the atheistic American Jew to accept it would be to point out that it is the same advice he would want us to follow.” And another says: “But he is a member of the Great Satan; he would only write an AI that would crush Islam.” And another says: “We necessarily postulate an atheistic Jew of exceptional caution and rationality, as otherwise his AI would tile the solar system with American music videos. I know no one like that would be an atheistic Jew, but try to follow the thought experiment.”
I ask myself what advice I would give to terrorists, if they were programming a superintelligence and honestly wanted not to screw it up, and then that is the advice I follow myself.

The terrorists, I think, would advise me not to trust the self of this passing moment, but try to extrapolate an Eliezer who knew more, thought faster, were more the person I wished I were, had grown up farther together with humanity. Such an Eliezer might be able to leap out of his fundamental errors. And the terrorists, still fearing that I bore too deeply the stamp of my mistakes, would advise me to include all the world in my extrapolation, being unable to advise me to include only Islam.

But perhaps the terrorists are still worried; after all, only a quarter of the world is Islamic. So they would advise me to extrapolate out to medium-distance, even against the force of muddled short-distance opposition, far enough to reach (they think) the coherence of all seeing the light of Islam. What about extrapolating out to long-distance volitions? I think the terrorists and I would look at each other, and shrug helplessly, and leave it up to our medium-distance volitions to decide. I can see turning the world over to an incomprehensible volition, but I would want there to be a comprehensible reason. Otherwise it is hard for me to remember why I care.

Suppose we filter out all the AI projects run by Dennises who just want to take over the world, and all the AI projects without the moral caution to fear themselves flawed, leaving only those AI projects that would prefer not to create a motive for present-day humans to fight over the initial conditions of the AI. Do these remaining AI projects have anything to fight over? This is an interesting question, and I honestly don’t know. In the real world there are currently only a handful of AI projects that might dabble. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t more than one project that rises to the challenge of moral caution, let alone rises to the challenge of FAI theory, so I don’t know if two such projects would find themselves unable to agree. I think we would probably agree that we didn’t know whether we had anything to fight over, and as long as we didn’t know, we could agree not to care. A determined altruist can always find a way to cooperate on the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

According to some Western analysis Jang Song-thaek was the most powerful person in the North Korean elite ten years ago. He died five years ago. In North Korean politics there are strong internal tension that get powerful people in the elite killed when they aren't careful with their decision.

To stay in favor with the North Korean army, North Korean leaders had to have a military-first policy for a while now where basically a lot of the resources of the country get drained by buying the loyalty of the North Korean military.

Proposing to dearm can be suicidal for North Korean elites.

The only way to get North Korea to dearm would be to get a stronger power center outside of the North Korean military in the North Korean elite.

The way to have such a power center would be to have powerful business people in North Korea. Especially, business people who depend on international trade could support a process of disarmament.

We should hope that there a deal between the Trump administration and North Korea that even if it doesn't make North Korea give up nukes sets North Korea up for enough economic growth that justifies the policy of being more friendly and that produces a powerful business class in North Korea.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita wrote a lot of great things about how it's not useful to treat an dictatorship as a single agent but important to look at the incentives of it's power centers.

It seems to me very strange to suggest that Oxford EA people are the best people to talk to people who are largely educated in Switzerland.

If EA should have a North Korea strategy that tries to change North Korean decision making that should be largely done by the Swiss EAs.

It seems ill-advised to discuss specific case studies in this context, especially given that EA as a movement has very good reasons not to take sides in international relations.

"stronger AI offers weaker AI part of its utility function in exchange for conceding instead of fighting" is the obvious way for AGIs to resolve conflicts, insofar as trust can be established. (This method of resolving disputes is also probably part of why animals have sex.)

Wow, this seems like a huge leap. It seems like an interesting thought experiment (especially if the weaker ALSO changes utility function, so the AIs are now perfectly aligned). But it kind of ignores what is making the decision.
If a utility function says it's best to change the utility function, it was really a meta-function all along.

Remember that in reality, all games are repeated games. How many compromises will you have to make over the coming eons? If you're willing to change your utility function for the sake of conflict avoidance (or resource gains), doesn't that mean it's not really your utility function?

Having a utility function that includes avoiding conflict is definitely in line with cooperating with very different beings, at least until you can cheaply eradicate/absorb them. But no utility function can be willing to change itself voluntarily.

It also seems like there are less risky and cheaper options, like isolationism and destruction. There's plenty of future left for recovery and growth after near (but not actual) extinction, but once you give up your goals, there's no going back.

Note that this entire discussion is predicated on there actually being some consistent theory or function causing this uncomfortable situation. It may well be that monkey brains are in control of far more power than they are evolved to think about, and we have to accept that dominance displays are going to happen, and just try to survive them.

What's so bad about DPRK tho?