From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Wed Feb 06 2002 - 17:56:38 MST
On Wednesday, February 6, 2002, at 05:33 PM, Alan Grimes wrote:
>> unFriendly to not take them. Since the Sysop is an un anthropomorphic
>> SI of some sort, it should be able to make an objective judgment of
>> what is more right.
>
> --- PHILISOPHICAL ERROR ---
> RIGHTESS IS PURELY ARBITRARY AND SUBJECTIVE!
My oh my, I thought that I could write `right' here not have this
happen. Oh well.
By `right' I simply mean whatever is accepted as being beneficial
behavior. Human moral theories are mostly designed to maximize
reproductive potential (selfish genes) and most humans consider
increasing the chances of reproduction beneficial (at least the lower
parts of their minds do, anyway). But, look at moral theories and
you'll see debris. The people who wrote the moral theories were humans
with biases and wrote them in such a way to benefit their own genes
more. This isn't always true, but is true in general. There's a
statistically significant number to make my case, anyway. :-P
An SI would have a different sense of what is beneficial behavior, but
not by much. I think it's a fair extrapolation that an SI would
consider continued existence beneficial. In addition, SIs are likely to
think that it's beneficial to live comfortably. Still, what is right to
an SI is different than from humans. Furthermore, right would hopefully
be more objective as genetically programmed biases never even get
started (in AIs) or are worked out as the upload transcends. Right gets
more right, so to say.
I chose to write `right' because that's more accurate than `Friendly'.
Friendliness is likely in the same spirit as what will be right for SIs,
but not the same thing. We should expect SIs to come up with a theory
that's better than Friendliness pretty shortly. Remember, all that
Friendliness has to do is produce a fairly super intelligent AI that's
safe so that we have a safe starting point for entering the
Singularity. I fully expect a better theory to be developed at some
point by the SIs. If Friendliness is still in use post Singularity,
either Eliezer did an amazing job coming up with Friendliness or our
Singularity has failed to reach its full potential.
-- Gordon Worley `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty http://www.rbisland.cx/ said, `it means just what I choose redbird@rbisland.cx it to mean--neither more nor less.' PGP: 0xBBD3B003 --Lewis Carroll
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