mwaser comments on Yet Another "Rational Approach To Morality & Friendly AI Sequence" - Less Wrong

-6 Post author: mwaser 06 November 2010 04:30PM

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Comment author: jmmcd 07 November 2010 03:57:05PM 0 points [-]

The question "which options are long-term rational answers?" corresponds immediately to the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" and can be investigated in the same way.

Mind you, "long-term rational answer" is not well-defined; I guess you mean something influenced by ideas like Nash equilibrium and evolutionarily stable strategy. What is a "short-term rational answer"?

The post you link to is irrelevant to Misha's reasonable question, except insofar as it contains discussion of hypotheses. If you really think that people here need to be educated as to what a hypothesis is, then a) it'd be better to link to a wikipedia definition and b) why are you bothering to post here?

Comment author: mwaser 07 November 2010 04:54:19PM -2 points [-]

The question "which options are long-term rational answers?" corresponds immediately to the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" and can be investigated in the same way.

Incorrect. Prove that one option is a long-term rational answer and you have proved the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers". That is nowhere near completing answering the question "which options are long-term rational answers"

My hypothesis was much, much more limited than "among the options are some long-term rational answers". It specified which of the options was a long-term rational answer. It further specified that all of the other options were not long-term rational answers. It is much, much easier to disprove my hypothesis than the broader hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" which gives it correspondingly more power.

If you really think that people here need to be educated as to what a hypothesis is, then a) it'd be better to link to a wikipedia definition and b) why are you bothering to post here?

Fully grokking Eliezer's post that I linked would have given you all of the above reply. The wikipedia definition is less clear than Eliezer's post. I post here because this community is more than capable of helping/forcing me to clarify my logic and rationality.

Comment author: mwaser 07 November 2010 09:47:01PM 0 points [-]

Could someone give me a hint as to why this particular comment which was specifically in answer to a question is being downvoted? I don't get it.

Comment author: jmmcd 07 November 2010 10:36:17PM *  0 points [-]

I didn't downvote because you were right that the hypothesis I provided (there are some rational options) was not equivalent to the question (which are the rational options). This is quite a fundamental point, so extra black marks to me for being careless.

However, Einstein's Arrogance doesn't deal with this fundamental point, so I disagree with "would have given you all of the above reply" and still dispute its relevance to Misha's original comment.

ETA: also you didn't address "what is a short-term rational answer?". Maybe these are possible reasons for downvoting?