Vladimir_Nesov comments on The Domain of Your Utility Function - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Peter_de_Blanc 23 June 2009 04:58AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 June 2009 10:01:47PM *  0 points [-]

Fair enough. Note that the superintelligence itself must be a simple decision algorithm for it to be knowably good, if that's at all possible (at the outset, before starting to process the particular data from observations), which kinda defeats the purpose of your statement. :-)

Comment author: orthonormal 23 June 2009 11:40:08PM 0 points [-]

Well, the code for the seed should be pretty simple, at least. But I don't see how that defeats the purpose of my statement; it may be that short of enlisting a superintelligence to help, all current attempts to approximate and extrapolate human preferences in a consistent fashion (e.g. explicit ethical or political theories) might be too crude to have any chance of success (by the standard of actual human preferences) in novel scenarios. I don't believe this will be the case, but it's a possibility worth keeping an eye on.