"... if not something that presses your primate buttons."

Still waiting.

Also, what notion of value do you have in mind, if not something that pushes your primate buttons? And if you're so down on the pleasures of narrative, why read sci-fi at all? Why not just, you know, read sci?

Not to mention a bitchin' soap opera.

@ Caledonian: eh? But why would the ability to suspend one's social-operations module at will make it boring to look at stories while using that module? And in what sense is one seeing them "directly" when one stops treating them as simulated social interactions?

Perhaps "learning" is the wrong word. But "recognition" seems too restrictive to capture everything that makes a good story good. There's also surprise - when an author uses the reader's capacity for recognition against them. Surely you admit that this is pretty much the life-blood of storytelling. And, for that matter, it strikes me that it probably can teach you something - about your own inferential dispositions, if nothing else.

Presumably the advantage of making Jupiter into a person rather than a ball of gas is not simply that we get an extra person to think about, but that it also allows us to explain various natural phenomena in a peculiarly satisfying way - as the traces of intelligible actions. Not that these explanations would have much to recommend them if you seriously wanted to understand the pheonomena. But literary writers are not, for the most part, in that business; "poetic truth" is an alienans predication, like "Tennessee whiskey".

"Savannah poets" is a superb coinage, btw. Is it yours?

Eliezer - wasn't Jeff's comment intended to suggest, not that there isn't a bias, but that the bias may be adaptive? Offhand I can't imagine quite what edge it might supply, but perhaps some story could be told.

@ Unknown: Well, one reason why our point of view is more valid than their's is that we exist and they don't.

In addition, it is probably worth stressing that inclusive fitness is not, strictly speaking, the goal of anything at all. Goals only make sense relative to intentions, values and so forth - the usual accoutrements of mentality. These are all things that we humans (and perhaps some other creatures) possess, but which evolution, and our genes, do not. No minds, you see. Despite appearances.

This said, there might be something to be said for engineering or breeding descendants whose drives are more harmonious than our own. For instance, they might be happier. Still, there's no particular reason why *we* should choose to make inclusive fitness the goal of all *their* striving, as opposed to something else.

That missing word: "of".

@ Tiiba # 1: Without wishing to second-guess Eliezer, I'd suggest that his prolonged examination of the buggy, ad-hoc character of human intelligence may be intended to preface a discussion AI, its goals and methods. After all, the contrast with human intelliegence could be illuminating.