Richard_Hollerith2 comments on Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Richard_Hollerith2 19 November 2007 10:12:51PM 0 points [-]

Let me answer a slightly different question: how confident are you that the benefits of publicizing the destructive potential of genetic algoritms outweighs the risks?

I am pretty confident that people setting out intentionally to do destruction on the scale addressed here are rare compared to people who do large-scale destruction as an unintentional side effect of trying to do good or at least ethically neutral things. Most evil is done by people who believe themselves to be good and who believe their net-evil deeds are net-good or net-neutral.

People of course differ in their definition of the good, but almost everyone capable of affecting them agree that certain outcomes (e.g. toasting the planet) are evil.