Vaniver comments on Toy model of human values - Less Wrong

3 Post author: xamdam 02 November 2010 06:28PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 03 November 2010 06:29:15AM 2 points [-]

Useful as an example of the difficulty of building consequentialists- "we can't even solve chess, for crying out loud!"- but I don't see it as particularly useful as an explanation of human values.

Although, sifting it more I think I may see the gemstones that you may be seeing. The value seems to be in saying "the goal of chess is completely described: be in a position where your enemy cannot prevent you from capturing his king" and "the goal of evolution is completely described: maximize inclusive genetic fitness", and then comparing the subgoals explicitly. Status, say, is the analogy of board position- it only leads to higher genetic fitness on average in some broad way, but it's a cheap and effective heuristic for doing so, just like good board position is a cheap and effective (but not guaranteed!) heuristic for winning at chess.

Comment author: xamdam 03 November 2010 06:38:23PM 1 point [-]

Status, say, is the analogy of board position- it only leads to higher genetic fitness on average in some broad way, but it's a cheap and effective heuristic for doing so, just like good board position is a cheap and effective (but not guaranteed!) heuristic for winning at chess

Yep, basically what I was getting at.