Tyrrell_McAllister comments on The Sword of Good - Less Wrong

85 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 September 2009 12:53AM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 03 September 2009 11:34:41PM *  3 points [-]

What are the justifiable expectations one could have about the Sword of Good? In particular, why suppose that it's a Sword of Good in anything other than name only? Why suppose that it's any protection against evil?

I also didn't consider the possibility that Vhazhar was planning to run the world himself directly. A human just doesn't have the computational capacity to run the world. If a human tried to run the world, there would still be both fortune and misfortune.

For that reason, I assumed that his plan was for some extrapolated version of his volition to run the world. But if he's created something that will implement his CEV accurately, hasn't he solved FAI?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 September 2009 01:58:27AM 9 points [-]

I also didn't consider the possibility that Vhazhar was planning to run the world himself directly. A human just doesn't have the computational capacity to run the world. If a human tried to run the world, there would still be both fortune and misfortune.

There could be less misfortune. A cautious human god who wasn't corrupted by power certainly could plausibly accomplish a lot of good with a few minimal actions. Of course the shaky part is that "cautious" and "not corrupted" part.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 September 2009 02:16:45AM *  5 points [-]

Where does the ability to specify complex wishes become distinct from the ability to implement them though? What are the capabilities of a god with human mind? If there is a lot of automation for implementing the wishes, how much of the person's preference does this automation anticipate? In what sense does the limitation on a god's mind to be merely human affect god's capacity to control the world? There doesn't seem to be a natural concept that captures this.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 04 September 2009 02:02:08PM 3 points [-]

There could be less misfortune.

Okay. I had taken the Prophecy of Doom to be saying that there would no longer be both "luck and misfortune". I can see that it could be read otherwise, though.