That is a good point, I did not think of it this way. I'm not sure if I agree or not, though. For example, couldn't we at least say that un-achievable goals, such as "fly to Mars in a hot air balloon", are sillier than achievable ones ?
Well, a totally neutral agent might be able to say that behaviors are less rational than others given the values of the agents trying to execute them, although it wouldn't care as such. But it wouldn't be able to discriminate between the value of end goals.
But, speaking more generally, is there any reason to believe that an agent who could not only change its own code at will, but also adopt a sort of third-person perspective at will, would have stable goals at all ? If it is true what you say, and all goals will look equally arbitrary, what prevents the agent from choosing one at random ? You might answer, "it will pick whichever goal helps it make more paperclips", but at the point when it's making the decision, it doesn't technically care about paperclips.
Why would it take a third person neutral perspective and give that perspective the power to change its goals?
Changing one's code doesn't demand a third person perspective. Suppose that we decipher the mechanisms of the human brain, and develop the technology to alter it. If you wanted to redesign yourself so that you wouldn't have a sex drive, or could go without sleep, etc, then you could have those alterations made mechanically (assuming for the sake of an argument that it's feasible to do this sort of thing mechanically.) The machines that do the alterations exert no judgment whatsoever, they're just performing the tasks assigned to them by the humans who make them. A human could use the machine to rewrite his or her morality into supporting human suffering and death, but why would they?
Similarly, Clippy has no need to implement a third-person perspective which doesn't share its values in order to judge how to self-modify, and no reason to do so in ways that defy its current values.
My point is that, during the course of its research, it will inevitable stumble upon the fact that its value system is totally arbitrary (unless an absolute morality exists, of course).
I think people at Less Wrong mostly accept that our value system is arbitrary in the same sense, but it hasn't compelled us to try and replace our values. They're still our values, however we came by them. Why would it matter to Clippy?
a totally neutral agent might be able to say that behaviors are less rational than others given the values of the agents trying to execute them, although it wouldn't care as such. But it wouldn't be able to discriminate between the value of end goals.
Agreed, but that goes back to my point about objective morality. If it exists at all (which I doubt), then attempting to perform objectively immoral actions would make as much sense as attempting to fly to Mars in a hot air balloon -- though perhaps with less in the way of immediate feedback.
...Why would it
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