Jef_Allbright comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 January 2008 06:00PM

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Comment author: Jef_Allbright 23 January 2008 01:47:15AM -1 points [-]

This form of reasoning, while correct within a *specified* context, is dangerously flawed with regard to application within contexts sufficiently complex that outcomes cannot be effectively modeled. This includes much of moral interest to humans. In such cases, as with evolutionary computation, an optimum strategy exploits best-known principles synergisticly promoting a maximally-coherent set of present values, rather than targeting illusory, realistically unspecifiable consequences. Your "rationality" is correct but incomplete. This speaks as well to the well-known paradoxes of all consequentialist ethics.