Comment on Open thread, 11-17 August 2014

Tue, 12 Aug 2014 17:19:39 GMT

After learning the very basics of natural selection, I started thinking about goal systems and reward circuits and ethics. I thought that all of our adaptations were intended to allow us to meet our survival needs so we could pass on our genes. But what should people do once survival needs are met? What's the next right and proper goal to pursue? That line of reasoning's related Googling led me to Eliezer's Levels of Intelligence paper, which in turn led me to Less Wrong.

Reading through the sequences, I found so many of the questions that I'd thought about in vague philosophical terms explained and analyzed rigorously, like personal identity vs continuity of subjective experience under things like teleportation. Part of the reason LW appealed to me so much back then is, I suspect, that I had already thought about so many of the same questions but just wasn't able to frame them correctly.

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