Tyrrell_McAllister comments on Are you a Democrat singletonian, or a Republican singletonian? - Less Wrong

-12 Post author: PhilGoetz 01 October 2009 09:35PM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 02 October 2009 02:29:06PM 1 point [-]

I think that Phil was talking about what Americans in general would say that they want from an AI. It should go without saying that what they would say would reveal fundamental misunderstandings of what they were talking about.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 October 2009 03:11:18PM 0 points [-]

It seems not.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 02 October 2009 05:13:03PM 0 points [-]

On the contrary, it would seem so.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 October 2009 05:52:13PM *  0 points [-]

There is a distinction between normative "what these people should choose" and descriptive "what would be these people's (uninformed) choice". I suspect Phil is taking both to give the same result in this post. (Phil?)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 08 October 2009 04:07:24AM 0 points [-]

Neither of those alternatives makes any sense to me. An uninformed choice would be a random choice. What they "should" choose sounds like what they would choose if they were much better reasoners than they are.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 08 October 2009 03:33:58PM *  1 point [-]

What sense did you mean to describe Democrats/libertarians/etc. choice about a singleton? Actual informed choice? Does this choice disagree with what you think they should choose (in the sense of what they would choose if they were smarter and more informed than they can ever actually be, but with the same values, which are not necessarily equal to yours)?

An uninformed choice would be a random choice.

Nothing is random in this sense. A choice made with limited ability to reason, even if "informed", still involves a fair amount of noise. Not being reliably informed of what the question actually means is but a grade of the same problem. Thus, I meant "uniformed choice" in the sense of not being reliably the correct choice, for one reason or another.