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DanArmak comments on Desires You're Not Thinking About at the Moment - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: Ghatanathoah 20 February 2013 09:41AM

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Comment author: DanArmak 20 February 2013 08:13:23PM 0 points [-]

You shouldn't try to taboo "people". Actual human brains really do think in terms of the category "people". If the world changes and the category no longer carves it at its joints (say, if superhuman AI is developed), human brains will remain to some extent hardwired with their category of "people". The only answer to the question of what constitutes a person is to go look at how human brains pattern-match things to recognize persons, which is that they look and behave like humans.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 20 February 2013 09:09:42PM -1 points [-]

That kind of attitude is an extremely effective way of -preventing- you from developing superhuman AI, or at least the kind you'd -want- to develop. Your superhuman AI needs to know the difference between plucked chickens and Greek philosophers.

Comment author: DanArmak 21 February 2013 07:38:04PM 0 points [-]

I think I don't understand what you're saying.

If you try to formalize what "people" or "morally valuable agents" are - also known as tabooing the word "people" - then you run into problems with bad definitions that don't match your intuition and maybe think plucked chickens are people.

That's exactly why I'm arguing that you should not formalize or taboo "people", because it's not a natural category; it's something that is best defined by pointing to a human brain and saying "whatever the brain recognizes as people, that's people".

Comment author: OrphanWilde 21 February 2013 07:51:36PM 0 points [-]

Are you going to put a human brain in your superhuman AI so it can use it for a reference?

Comment author: DanArmak 21 February 2013 09:32:13PM 0 points [-]

I could if I had to. Or I could tell it to analyze some brains and remember the results.