Nick_Tarleton comments on Congratulations to Paris Hilton - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 October 2007 12:31AM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 24 October 2007 07:51:00PM 0 points [-]

I'm still reading.

It is not obvious why creating a causal chain that goes on indefinitely is uniquely morally relevant. (Nor is it obvious that the concept is meaningful in reality - a causal chain with a starting point can be unboundedly long but at no actual point in time will it be infinite.) I do see it as valuable to look for ways to escape this space-time continuum, because I presently want (and think I will continue to want) (post)humanity to continue existing and growing indefinitely, but I don't believe there is any universal validity to this value. (If values like this form attractors for complex - i.e. not paperclip-maximizing - intelligences I suppose they would be in a sense "objective", but would not acquire any more normative force, whatever that is.) I don't see this value as "unreal" because it's subjective, though. My subjectivity is very real to me.

Saying that only indefinitely-long causal chains are important does not tell us which indefinitely-long causal chains are good and which ones are evil.

This was Eliezer's point: how could you ever recognize which ones are good and which ones are evil? How could you even recognize a process for recognizing objective good and evil?