Phlebas comments on In favour of a selective CEV initial dynamic - Less Wrong

12 [deleted] 21 October 2011 05:33PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 22 October 2011 07:17:06PM *  -1 points [-]

Here is the post that you linked to, in which you ostensibly prove that an excerpt of my essay was blatantly false:

Phlebas:

In other words, the CEV initial dynamic shouldn't be regarded as discovering what a group of people most desire collectively "by definition" - it is imperfect. If a universal CEV implementation is more difficult for human programmers to do well than a selective CEV, then a selective CEV might not only extrapolate the desires of the group in question more accurately, but also do a better job of reflecting the most effectively extrapolated desires of humanity as a whole.

wedrifid:

I am wary of using arguments along the lines of "CEV<not everyone> is better for everyone than CEV<everyone>". If calculating based on a subset happens to be the most practical instrumentally useful hack for implementing CEV<everyone> then an even remotely competent AI can figure that out itself.

Note that I have made no particular claim in this excerpt about how likely it is that a selective CEV would produce output closer to that of an ideal universal CEV dynamic than a universal CEV would. I merely claimed that a universal CEV dynamic designed by humans is not what humans most desire collectively “by definition”, i.e. it is not logically necessary that it approximates the ideal human-wide CEV (such as a superintelligence might develop) better than the selective CEV.

Here is a comment claiming that CEV most accurately identifies a group’s average desires “by definition” (assuming he doesn’t edit it). So it is not a strawman position that I am criticising in that excerpt.

You argue that even given a suboptimal initial dynamic, the superintelligent AI “can” figure out a better dynamic and implement that instead. Well of course it “can” – nowhere have I denied that the universal CEV might (with strong likelihood in fact) ultimately produce at least as close an approximation to the ideal CEV of humanity as a selective CEV would.

Nonetheless, high probability =/= logical necessity. Therefore you may wish to revisit your accusation of blatant fallacy.

How probable exactly is an interesting question, but best left alone in this comment since I don't wish to muddy the waters regarding the nature of the original statement that you were criticising.

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