= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Constant comments on Human errors, human values - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (135)
I'm a bit skeptical of using majority survey response to determine "morality." After all, given a Bayesian probability problem, (the exact problem was patients with cancer tests, with a chance of returning a false positive,) most people will give the wrong answer, but we certainly don't want our computers to make this kind of error.
As to the torture vs. dust specks, when I thought about it, I decided first that torture was unacceptable, and then tried to modify my utility function to round to zero, etc. I was very appalled with myself to find that I decided the answer in advance, and then tried to make my utility function fit a predetermined answer. It felt an awful lot like rationalizing. I don't know if everyone else is doing the same thing, but if you are, I urge you to reconsider. If we always go with what feels right, what's the point of using utility functions at all?
Morality may be the sort of thing that people are especially likely to get right. Specifically, morality may be a set of rules created, supported, and observed by virtually everyone. If so, then a majority survey response about morality may be much like a majority survey response about the rules of chess, restricted to avid chess players (i.e., that subset of the population which observes and supports the rules of chess as a nearly daily occurrence, just as virtually the whole of humanity observes and supports the rules of morality on a daily basis).
If you go to a chess tournament and ask the participants to demonstrate how the knight moves in chess, then (a) the vast majority will almost certainly give you the same answer, and (b) that answer will almost certainly be right.