Perplexed comments on The Urgent Meta-Ethics of Friendly Artificial Intelligence - Less Wrong

45 Post author: lukeprog 01 February 2011 02:15PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 February 2011 02:38:30PM *  13 points [-]

As it expands across the galaxy, perhaps encountering other creatures, it could do some behavioral psychology and neuroscience on these creatures to decode their intentional action systems

Now, it's just a wild guess here, but I'm guessing that a lot of philosophers who use the language "reasons for action" would disagree that "knowing the Baby-eaters evolved to eat babies" is a reason to eat babies. Am I wrong?

I'm merely raising questions that need to be considered very carefully.

I tend to be a bit gruff around people who merely raise questions; I tend to view the kind of philosophy I do as the track where you need some answers for a specific reason, figure them out, move on, and dance back for repairs if a new insight makes it necessary; and this being a separate track from people who raise lots of questions and are uncomfortable with the notion of settling on an answer. I don't expect those two tracks to meet much.

Comment author: Perplexed 03 February 2011 03:04:08PM *  2 points [-]

If you don't spend much time on the track where people just raise questions, how do you encounter the new insights that make it necessary to dance back for repairs on your track?

Just asking. :)

Though I do tend to admire your attitude of pragmatism and impatience with those who dither forever.

Comment author: benelliott 03 February 2011 05:02:00PM 2 points [-]

I presume you encounter them later on. Maybe while doing more ground-level thinking about how to actually implement your meta-ethics you realise that it isn't quite coherent.

I'm not sure if this flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach is best, but as has been pointed out before, there are costs associated with taking too long as well as with not being careful enough, there must come a point where the risk is too small and the time it would take to fix it too long.

Comment author: Perplexed 03 February 2011 05:12:18PM 0 points [-]

Well, I'll certainly agree that more potential problems are surfaced by moving ahead with the implementation than by going back to the customer with another round of questions about the requirements.