Sengachi comments on By Which It May Be Judged - LessWrong

35 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2012 04:26AM

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Comment author: nshepperd 10 December 2012 05:59:18AM 5 points [-]

Suppose I have a choice to make, and my moral intuition is throwing error codes. I have two axiomations of morality that are capable of examining the choice, but they give opposite answers.

If you're not sure which of two options is better, the only thing that will help is to think about it for a long time. (Note: if you "have two axiomatizations of morality", and they disagree, then at most one of them accurately describes what you were trying to get at when you attempted to axiomatize morality. To work out which one is wrong, you need to think about them for ages until you notice that one of them says something wrong.)

In a universe that contains a neurotypical human and clippy, and they're staring at eachother, is there an asymmetry?

Yes, the human is better. Why? Because the human cares about what is better. In contrast to clippy, who just cares about what is paperclippier.

Comment author: Sengachi 21 December 2012 08:44:27AM 2 points [-]

Ah, but Clippy is far more clipperific, and so will do more clippy things. Better is not clippy, why should it matter?

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 22 December 2012 02:54:39PM 6 points [-]

Perhaps it would help to taboo "symmetry", or at least to say what kind of... uhm, mapping... do we really expect here. Just some way to play with words, or something useful? How specifically useful?

Saying "humans : better = paperclips maximizers : more clippy" would be a correct answer in a test of verbal skills. Just be careful not to add a wrong connotation there.

Because saying "...therefore 'better' and 'more clippy' are just two different ways of being better, for two different species" would be a nonsense, exactly like saying "...therefore 'more clippy' and 'better' are just two different ways of being more clippy, for two different species". No, being better is not a homo sapiens way to produce the most paperclips. And being more clippy is not a paperclip maximizer way to produce the most happiness (even for the paperclip maximizers).