PhilGoetz comments on Exterminating life is rational - Less Wrong

17 Post author: PhilGoetz 06 August 2009 04:17PM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian 06 August 2009 09:19:31PM *  5 points [-]

And even if you somehow worked around all these arguments, evolution, again, thwarts you. Even if you don't agree that rational agents are selfish, your unselfish agents will be out-competed by selfish agents. The claim that rational agents are not selfish implies that rational agents are unfit.

This is not how evolution works. Evolution cares about how many of your offspring survive. Selfishness need not be conducive to this. Also, evolution can't really thwart you. You're done evolving; you can check it off your to-do list.

It's entirely plausible that being unselfish is adaptive; from a personal (non-gene, i.e. the perspective we actually have) perspective, having children is extremely unselfish.

Selfishness and unselfishness are arational. Rationality is about maximizing the output of your utility function (in this context). Selfishness is about what that utility function actually is.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 06 August 2009 10:19:49PM *  0 points [-]

Evolution cares about how many of your offspring survive. Selfishness need not be conducive to this.

Selection, acting on the individual, selects for those individuals who act in ways that cause their own offspring to survive more. That is what I mean by selfishness. Selfish genes. Selfish memes.

Once people no longer die, selection will not have so much to do with death and reproduction, but with the accumulation of resources. Think about that, and it will become more clear that that will select directly for selfishness in the conventional sense.

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