wedrifid comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

29 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 March 2012 12:41AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 10 January 2013 09:39:52AM 4 points [-]

Be the opposite of a religion.

The opposite of most sorts of stupid is still stupid. Particularly most things that are functional enough to proliferate themselves successfully.

Don't have a leader

If you meant "Have more than one leader" you'd be on to something. That isn't what you meant though.

Don''t have a gospel

There is a difference between the connotations you are going with for 'gospel' and what amounts to a textbook that most people haven't read anyway.

Don't have a dogma

I sometimes wish people would submit to reference to rudimentary references to rational, logical, decision theoretic or scientific concepts as if they were dogma. That is far from what I observe.

Don't have quasi-religious "meetups"

Socialize in person with rudimentary organisation? Oh the horror!

Don't have quasi-religious rituals (!)

Actually, I don't disagree at all on this one. Or at least I'd prefer that anyone who was into that kind of thing did it without it being affiliated with lesswrong in any way except partial membership overlap.

Don't have an eschatology

Are you complaining (or shaming with labels the observation) that an economist and an AI researcher attempted to use their respective expertise to make predictions about the future?

Don't have a God.

Don't. Working on it...

WELCOME CRITIICISM AND DISSENT

Most upvoted post. Welcome competent, sane or useful criticism. Don't give nonsense a free pass just because it is 'dissent'.

Comment author: Peterdjones comment score below threshold [+] (4 children)

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 10 January 2013 01:06:47PM -1 points [-]

Is this nonsense ?

It contains five misspellings in a single paragraph: "utimately" "canot" "statees" "hvae" "ontoogical" which might themselves be enough for a downvote, regardless of content.

As for the is-ought problem, if we accept that "ought" is just a matter of calculations in our brain returning an output (and reject that it's a matter of e.g. our brain receiving supernatural instruction from some non-physical soul), then the "ought" is describable in terms of the world-that-is, because every algorithm in our brain is describable in terms of the world-that-is.

It's not a matter of "cramming" an entire world-state into your brain -- any approximation that your brain is making, including any self-identified deficiency in the ability to make a moral evaluation in any particular situation, are also encoded in your brain -- your current brain, not some hypothetical superbrain.

Comment author: Peterdjones 10 January 2013 01:09:45PM * 0 points [-]

As for the is-ought problem, if we accept that "ought" is just a matter of calculations in our brain returning an output

But we shouldnt accept that, because we can miscalculate an "ought" or antyhing else. The is-ought problem is the problem of correctly inferring an ought from a tractable amount of "is's".

(and reject that it's a matter of e.g. our brain receiving supernatural instruction from some non-physical soul), then the "ought" is describable in terms of the world-that-is, because every algorithm in our brain is describable in terms of the world-that-is.

It perhaps might be one day given sufficiently advanced brain scanning, but we don't have that now, so we still have an is-ought gap.

It's not a matter of "cramming" an entire world-state into your brain -- any approximation that your brain is making, including any self-identified deficiency in the ability to make a moral evaluation in any particular situation, are also encoded in your brain -- your current brain, not some hypothetical superbrain.

The is-ought problem is epistemic. Being told that I have an epistemically inaccessible black box in my head that calculates oughts still doesn't lead to a situation where oughts can be consciously undestood as correct entailments of is's.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 10 January 2013 01:19:46PM 0 points [-]

because we can miscalculate an "ought" or anything else.

One way to miscalculate an "ought" is the same way that we can miscalculate an "is" -- e.g. lack of information, erroneous knowledge, false understanding of how to weigh data, etc.

And also, because people aren't perfectly self-aware, we can mistake mere habits or strongly-held preferences to be the outputs of our moral algorithm -- same way that e.g. a synaesthete might perceive the number 8 to be colored blue, even though there's no "blue" light frequency striking the optical nerve. But that sort of thing doesn't seem as a very deep philosophical problem to me.

Comment author: Peterdjones 10 January 2013 01:30:05PM -1 points [-]

We can correct miscalculations where we have an conscious epistemic grasp of how the calculation should work. If morality is a neural black box, we have no such grasp. Such a neural black box cannot be used to plug the is-ought gap, because it does not distinguish correct calculations from miscalculations.

wedrifid comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

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