J_Thomas comments on Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 November 2007 05:55AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (22)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: J_Thomas 19 November 2007 03:11:25PM 2 points [-]

Skilling *was* selecting badly. The 10% he discarded each year might have included some he should have kept, and vice versa.

Similarly, God at one point said he was going to get rid of evil people and keep good people and so people would get better. I don't see much evidence that's worked well.

Evolution happens, but if you want to harness it for your own goals you have to be very careful. Try to arrange it so you can throw away your mistakes.