Will_Newsome comments on The curse of identity - Less Wrong

121 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 17 November 2011 07:28PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 26 July 2012 07:11:51PM 3 points [-]

Meh. The goal of leading to sentient beings living, to people being happy, to individuals having the freedom to control their own lives, to minds exploring new territory instead of falling into infinite loops, to the universe having a richness and complexity to it that goes beyond pebble heaps, etc. has probably much more Kolmogorov complexity than the goal of maximizing the number of paperclips in the universe. If preferring the former is irrational, I am irrational and proud of it.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 26 July 2012 08:39:53PM -1 points [-]

Oh, also "look at the optimization targets of the processes that created the process that is me" is a short program, much shorter than needed to specify paperclip maximization, though it's somewhat tricky because all that is modulo the symbol grounding problem. And that's only half a meta level up, you can make it more elegant (shorter) than that.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 July 2012 10:21:13PM 2 points [-]

Maybe “maximizing the number of paperclips in the universe” wasn't the best example. “Throwing as much stuff as possible into supermassive black holes” would have been a better one.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 04 August 2012 02:05:43PM -1 points [-]

I can only say: black holes are creepy as hell.