PhilGoetz comments on Human values differ as much as values can differ - Less Wrong

13 Post author: PhilGoetz 03 May 2010 07:35PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 03 May 2010 11:54:11PM *  4 points [-]

If you need to run another instance of a given program on a faster computer, but you don't know what an algorithm is, or what part of the thing in front of you is a "computer" and what part is a "computer program", and you have not as of yet discovered the concept of universal computation, nor are certain whether the computer hardware, or even arithmetic itself, operates deterministically -

-- then you should take some time to study the thing in front of you and figure out what you're talking about.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 May 2010 12:08:25AM 0 points [-]

You'd probably need to study how these "computers" work in general, not how to change the background color in documents opened with a word processor that runs on the thing. A better analogy in the direction you took is uploading: we need to study neurons, not beliefs that a brain holds.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 04 May 2010 12:17:06AM 5 points [-]

You seem to think that values are just a content problem, and that we can build a mechanism now and fill the content in later. But the whole endeavor is full of unjustified assumptions about what values are, and what values we should pursue. We have to learn a lot more about what values are, what values are possible, what values humans have, and why they have them, before we can decide what we ought to try to do in the first place.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 May 2010 12:18:16AM *  0 points [-]

We have to learn a lot more about what values are, what values are possible, what values humans have, and why they have them, before we can decide what we ought to try to do in the first place.

Of course. Only the finer detail is content problem.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 May 2010 12:25:34AM -2 points [-]

But the whole endeavor is full of unjustified assumptions about what values are, and what values we should pursue.

Not that I know of. On the contrary, the assumption is that one shouldn't posit statements about which values human actually have, and what kind of mathematical structure values are is an open problem.