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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Post Your Utility Function - Less Wrong
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If you install an alarm system that uses a video camera to recognize movement and calls the police if it's armed, you are delegating some of the map-making and decision-making to the alarm system. You are neither aware of the exact nature of possible intruders, nor making a decision regarding calling the police before any intrusion actually occurs. The system decides what to do by itself, according to the aspect of your values it implements. You map is not involved.
Yes, but your decision to install it (as well as your decision to arm it) comes from your map. You would not install it if you thought you had virtually no chance of being burglarized, or if you thought that it would have a false alarm every five minutes when the train went past.
We can make choices that cause other (human, mechanical, etc) agents to act in particular ways, as one of the manners in which we affect possible futures. But these sorts of choices are evaluated by us in the same way as others.
I fear we've resorted to arguing about the semantics of "map" versus "territory", as I don't see a scenario where we'd predict or decide differently from each other on account of this disagreement. As such, I'm willing to drop it for now unless you see such a scenario.
(My disagreement with Mr. Eby, on the other hand, appears to be more substantive.)
It appears to lead nowhere: your comments are clear, while his are all smoke and mirrors, in many many words.
And does this alarm system have "preferences" that are "about" reality? Or does it merely generate outputs in response to inputs, according to the "values it implements"?
My argument is simply that humans are no different than this hypothetical alarm system; the things we call preferences are no different than variables in the alarm system's controller - an implementation of values that are not our own.
If there are any "preferences about reality" in the system, they belong to the maker of the alarm system, as it is merely an implementation of the maker's values.
By analogy, if our preferences are the implementation of any values, they are the "values" of natural selection, not our own.
If now you say that natural selection doesn't have any preferences or values, then we are left with no preferences anywhere -- merely isomorphism between control systems and their environments. Saying this isomorphism is "about" something is saying that a mental entity (the "about" relationship) exists in the real world, i.e., supernaturalism.
In short, what I'm saying is that anybody who argues human preferences are "about" reality is anthropomorphizing the alarm system.
However, if you say that the alarm system does have preferences by some reductionistic definition of "preference", and you assert that human preference is exactly the same, then we are still left to determine the manner in which these preferences are "about" reality.
If nobody made the alarm system, but it just happened to be formed by a spontaneous jumbling of parts, can it still be said to have preferences? Are its "preferences" still "about" reality in that case?
Both. You are now trying to explain away the rainbow, by insisting that it consists of atoms, which can't in themselves possess the properties of a rainbow.
So an alarm system has preferences? That is not most people's understanding of the word "preference", which requires a degree of agency that most rationalists wouldn't attribute to an alarm system.
Nonetheless, let us say an alarm system has preferences. You didn't answer any of my follow-on questions for that case.
As for explaining away the rainbow, you seem to have me confused with an anti-reductionist. See Explaining vs. Explaining Away, in particular:
At this point, I am attempting to show that the very concept of a "preference" existing in the first place is something projected onto the world by an inbuilt bias in human perception. Reality does not have preferences, it has behaviors.
This is not erasing the rainbow from the world, it's attempting to erase the projection of a mind-modeling variable ("preference") from the world, in much the same way as Eliezer broke down the idea of "possible" actions in one of his series.
So, if you are claiming that preference actually exists, please give your definition of a preference, such that alarm systems and humans both have them.
A good reply, if only you approached the discussion this constructively more often.
Note that probability is also in the mind, but yet your see all the facts through it, and you can't ever revoke it, each mind is locked in its subjectively objective character. What do you think of that?
I think that those things have already been very well explained by Eliezer -- so much so that I assumed that you (and the others participating in this discussion) would have already internalized them to the same degree as I have, such that asserting "preferences" to be "about" things would be a blatantly obvious instance of the mind projection fallacy.
That's why, early on, I tended to just speak as though it was bloody obvious, and why I haven't been painstakingly breaking it all out piece by piece, and why I've been baffled by the argument, confusion, and downvoting from people for whom this sort of basic reductionism ought to be a bloody simple matter.
Oh, and finally, I think that you still haven't given your definition of "preference", such that humans and alarm systems both have it, so that we can then discuss how it can then be "about" something... and whether that "aboutness" exists in the thing having the preference, or merely in your mental model of the thing.
That in reply to a comment full of links to Eliezer's articles. You also didn't answer my comment, but wrote some text that doesn't help me in our argument. I wasn't even talking about preference.
I know. That's the problem. See this comment and this one, where I asked for your definition of preference, which you still haven't given.
That's because you also "didn't answer my comment, but wrote some text that doesn't help me in our argument." I was attempting to redirect you to answering the question which you've now ducked twice in a row.
Writing text that doesn't help is pointless and mildly destructive. I don't see how me answering your questions would help this situation. Maybe you have the same sentiment towards answering my questions, but that's separate from reciprocation. I'm currently trying to understand your position in terms of my position, not to explain to you my position.
We reached a point in the discussion where it appears the only way we could disagree is if we had a different definition of "preference". Since I believe I've made my definition quite clear, I wanted to know what yours is.
It might not help you, but it would certainly help me to understand your position, if you are not using the common definition of preference.
I asked you first, and you responded with (AFAICT) a non-answer. You appear to have been projecting entirely different arguments and thesis on to me, and posting links to articles whose conclusions I appear to be more in line with than you are -- again, as far as I can tell.
So, I actually answered your question (i.e. "what do you think?"), even though you still haven't answered mine.