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scientism comments on What makes us think _any_ of our terminal values aren't based on a misunderstanding of reality? - Less Wrong Discussion
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You're right that a meaningless goal cannot be pursued, but nor can you be said to even attempt to pursue it - i.e., the pursuit of a meaningless goal is itself a meaningless activity. Bob can't put any effort into his goal of time travel, he can only confusedly do things he mistakenly thinks of as "pursuing the goal of time travel", because pursuing the goal of time travel isn't a possible activity. What Bob has learned is that he wasn't pursuing the goal of time travel to begin with. He was altogether wrong about having a terminal value of travelling back in time and riding a dinosaur because there's no such thing.
That seems obviously wrong to me. There's nothing at all preventing me from designing an invisible-pink-unicorn maximizer, even if invisible pink unicorns are impossible. For that matter, if we allow counterfactuals, an invisible-pink-unicorn maximizer still looks like an intelligence designed to maximize unicorns - in the counterfactual universe where unicorns exist, the intelligence takes actions that tend to maximize unicorns.
How would you empirically distinguish between your invisible-pink-unicorn maximizer and something that wasn't an invisible-pink-unicorn maximizer? I mean, you could look for a section of code that was interpreting sensory inputs as number of invisible-pink-unicorns - except you couldn't, because there's no set of sensory inputs that corresponds to that, because they're impossible. If we're talking about counterfactuals, the counterfactual universe in which the sensory inputs that currently correspond to paperclips correspond to invisible-pink-unicorns seems just as valid as any other.
Well, there's certainly a set of sensory inputs that corresponds to /invisible-unicorn/, based on which one could build an invisible unicorn detector. Similarly, there's a set of sensory inputs that corresponds to /pink-unicorn/, based on which one could build a pink unicorn detector.
If I wire a pink unicorn detector up to an invisible unicorn detector such that a light goes on iff both detectors fire on the same object, have I not just constructed an invisible-pink-unicorn detector?
Granted, a detector is not the same thing as a maximizer, but the conceptual issue seems identical in both cases.
Maybe. Or maybe you've constructed a square-circle detector; no experiment would let you tell the difference, no?
I think the way around this is some notion of which kind of counterfactuals are valid and which aren't. I've seen posts here (and need to read more) about evaluating these counterfactuals via surgery on causal graphs. But while I can see how such reasoning would work an object that exists in a different possible world (i.e. a "contingently nonexistent" object) I don't (yet?) see how to apply it to a logically impossible ("necessarily nonexistent") object. Is there a good notion available that can say one counterfactuals involving such things is more valid than another?
Take the thing apart and test its components in isolation. If in isolation they test for squares and circles, their aggregate is a square-circle detector (which never fires). If in isolation they test for pink unicorns and invisible unicorns, their aggregate is an invisible-pink-unicorn detector (which never fires).
That does not follow. I'll admit my original example is mildly flawed, but let's tack on something (that's still impossible) to illustrate my point: invisible pink telekinetic unicorns. Still not a thing that can exist, if you define telekinesis as "action at a distance, not mediated through one of the four fundamental forces." But now, if you see an object stably floating in vacuum, and detect no gravitational or electromagnetic anomalies (and you're in an accelerated reference frame like the surface of the earth, etc etc), you can infer the presence of an invisible telekinetic something.
Or in general - an impossible object will have an impossible set of sensory inputs, but the set of corresponding sensory inputs still exists.
Yeah, spooky action at a distance :-) Nowadays we usually call it "quantum entanglement" :-D
... I'm pretty sure no arrangement of entangled particles will create an object that just hovers a half-foot above the Earth's surface.
Thank you, I think you articulated better than anybody so far what I mean by a goal turning out to be meaningless.
Do you believe that a goal must persist down the the most fundamental reductionist level in order to really be a goal?
If not, can/should methods be employed in the pursuit of a goal such that the methods exist at a lower level than the goal itself?
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. I don't think there's a way to identify whether a goal is meaningless at a more fundamental level of description. Obviously Bob would be prone to say things like "today I did x in pursuit of my goal of time travel" but there's no way of telling that it's meaningless at any other level than that of meaning, i.e., with respect to language. Other than that, it seems to me that he'd be doing pretty much the same things, physically speaking, as someone pursuing a meaningful goal. He might even do useful things, like make breakthroughs in theoretical physics, despite being wholly confused about what he's doing.