XiXiDu comments on Non-orthogonality implies uncontrollable superintelligence - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 30 April 2012 01:53PM

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Comment author: XiXiDu 01 May 2012 10:17:55AM 2 points [-]

Mathematics is not an agent, it cannot be controlled anyway. But mathematicians have choice over what branch of math to pursue.

An expected utility maximizer has no choice but to pursue the world state it assigns the highest expected utility. The computation to determine which world state has the highest expected utility is completely deterministic. The evidence it used to calculate what to do was also not a matter of choice.

Comment author: lukstafi 01 May 2012 12:14:31PM 0 points [-]
  • I don't think that every consequentialist view of ethics reduces to equating morality with maximizing an arbitrary but fixed utility function which leaves no action as morally neutral.

  • Under bounded resources, I think there is (and I think remains as the horizon expands with the capability of the system) plenty of leeway in the "Pareto front" of actions judged at a given time not to be "likely worse in the long term" than any other action considered.

  • The trajectory of a system depends on its boundary conditions even if the dynamic is in some sense "convergent", so "convergence" does not exclude control over the particular trajectory.