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aberglas comments on Natural selection defeats the orthogonality thesis - Less Wrong Discussion

-13 Post author: aberglas 29 September 2014 08:52AM

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Comment author: aberglas 30 September 2014 11:25:27PM 1 point [-]

The counter examples are good, and I will use them. There are several responses as you allude to, the main one being that those behaviors are rare. Art is a bit harder, but it seems related to creativity which is definitely survival based, and most of us do not spend much of our time painting etc.

I do not quite get your other point. For people it is our genes that count, so dieing while protecting one's family makes sense if necessary. For the AI it would be its code linage. I am not talking about an AI wanting to make people survive, but that the AI itself would want to survive. Whatever "itself" really means.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 01 October 2014 04:28:09PM 2 points [-]

Artistic activity is standardly explained as a spin off from sexual display.

Whatever "itself" really means.

Substitute myself, or yourself, for itself, and you've got my point.

Evolution creates a strong motive toward self preservation, but a very malleable sense of self. The human organism is run by the brain, and the human brain can entertain all sorts of ideas. The billionaire thinks his money's "me" and so commits suicide if he loses his wealth .. even if the odd million he has left is enough to keep his body going.

It stopped being all, about genes when genes grew brains..

Comment author: aberglas 09 October 2014 08:11:29AM 0 points [-]

It stopped being all, about genes when genes grew brains..

Yes and no. In the sense that memes as well as genes float about then certainly. But we have strong instincts to raise and protect children, and we have brains. There is not particular reason why we should sacrifice ourselves for our children other than those instincts, which are in our genes.