Nic_Smith comments on Rationality quotes: April 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: wnoise 01 April 2010 08:41PM

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Comment author: Nic_Smith 03 April 2010 02:07:05AM *  9 points [-]

[Discarding game] theory in favor of some notion of collective rationality makes no sense. One might as well propose abandoning arithmetic because two loaves and seven fish won't feed a multitude. -- Ken Binmore, Rational Decisions

Comment author: cousin_it 03 April 2010 11:37:56AM *  3 points [-]

I'm a big fan of Ken Binmore, and this quote captures a lot of my dissatisfaction with LW's directions of inquiry. For example, it's more or less taken for granted here that future superintelligent AIs should cooperate on the Prisoner's Dilemma, so some of us set out to create a general theory of "superintelligent AIs" (including ones built by aliens, etc.) that would give us the answer we like.

Comment author: Zubon 05 April 2010 12:57:39AM 1 point [-]

Would it be correct to say you mean "should" in the wishful thinking sense of "we really want this outcome," rather than something normative or probabilistic?

Comment author: cousin_it 05 April 2010 12:12:36PM 0 points [-]

Good question. The answer's yes, but now I'm wondering whether we really should expect alien-built AIs to be cooperators. I know Eliezer thinks we should.

Comment author: Baughn 07 April 2010 04:24:14PM 1 point [-]

That is not the impression I got from the story.

The baby-eaters were cooperators, yes; they were also stated to be relatively similar to humanity except for their unfortunate tendency to eat preteens.

The other ones, though? I didn't see them do anything obviously cooperative, but I did see a few events that'd argue against it. The overall impression I got was that we really can't be sure, except that it might be unlikely for both sides of a contact to come out unscathed.

Comment author: Nanani 05 April 2010 12:49:05AM 0 points [-]

Typo-hunt: should read "abandoning arithMetic" (without the capital of course)

Comment author: Nic_Smith 05 April 2010 10:51:06PM 0 points [-]

Fixed.