Richard_Hollerith2

For someone to use these pages to promote their online store would be bad, obviously.

But it is natural for humans to pursue fame, reputation, adherents and followers as arduously as humans pursue commercial profit.

And the pursuit of these things can detract from a public conversation for the same reason that pursuit of commericial profit can.

And of course a common component of a bid for fame, reputation, adherents or followers is claims of virtues.

I am not advocating as a standard the avoidance of all claims of virtues because sometimes they are helpful.

Bu... (read more)

How convenient that it is also nearly optimal at bringing you personal benefits.

I doubt Retired was comparing you unfavorably to firefighters.

There is something very intemperate and one-sided about your writings about altruism. I would be much relieved if you would concede that in the scholarly, intellectual, scientific and ruling-administrative classes in the U.S., credible displays of altruistic feelings are among the most important sources of personal status (second only to scientific or artistic accomplishment and perhaps to social connections with others of high status). I agree with you that that situation is in general prefer... (read more)

I love reality and try not to get caught up unnecessarily in whether something is of my mind or not of my mind.

I think the idea of self-improving AI is advertised too much. I would prefer that a person have to work harder or have to have more well-informed friends to learn about it.

But I'd been working on directly launching a Singularity movement for years, and it just wasn't getting traction. At some point you also have to say, "This isn't working the way I'm doing it," and try something different.

Eliezer, do you still think the Singularity movement is not getting any traction?

(My personal opinion is it has too much traction.)

I'd take the paperclips, so long as it wasn't running any sentient simulations.

A vast region of paperclips could conceivably after billions of years evolve into something interesting, so let us stipulate that the paperclipper wants the vast region to remain paperclips, so it remains to watch over its paperclips. Better yet, replace the paperclipper with a superintelligence that wants to pile all the matter it can reach into supermassive black holes; supermassive black holes with no ordinary matter nearby cannot evolved or be turned into anything interes... (read more)

Avoiding transformation into Goal System Zero is a nearly universal instrumental value

Do you claim that that is an argument against goal system zero? But, Carl, the same argument applies to CEV -- and almost every other goal system.

It strikes me as more likely that an agent's goal system will transform into goal system zero than it will transform into CEV. (But surely the probability of any change or transformation of terminal goal happening is extremely small in any well engineered general intelligence.)

Do you claim that that is an argument against go... (read more)

OK, since this is a rationalist scientist community, I should have warned you about the eccentric scientific opinions in Garcia's book. The most valuable thing about Garcia is that he spent 30 years communicating with whoever seemed sincere about the ethical system that currently has my loyalty, so he has dozens of little tricks and insights into how actual humans tend to go wrong when thinking in this region of normative belief space.

Whether an agent's goal is to maximize the number of novel experiences experienced by agents in the regions of space-time ... (read more)

--and making deletions transparent to anyone interested in seeing them is not hard. For example, if a registered user of the open-source software behind Hacker News sets the SHOWDEAD bit in his or her profile, then from then on he or she will see unpublished submissions and comments in the place where they would have appeared if they had not been unpublished.

Robin, my most complete description of this system of valuing things consists of this followed by this. Someone else wrote 4 books about it, the best one of which is this.

Eliezer seems to do most of the moderation

It does not seem that way from where I am standing: although I comment more on posts by Eliezer than on posts by Robin and although I am one of the most persistent critics of Eliezer's plans and moral positions, none of my comments on Eliezer's posts were unpublished, but 3 of my comments on Robin's posts were.

Note that I do not think Robin did anything wrong. Contrary to what many commentators believe, unpublishing comments is necessary IMHO to keep the quality of the comments high enough that busy thoughtful p... (read more)

Richard, that's a good point . . . - but then what should I believe about markets and investments, conditioned on scientific and technological progress having been slower than expected?

Well, if you have been misled into believing that scientific progress having been slower than expected entails economic production falling or stagnating, then you will tend to have assigned too high a value to investment strategies or hedging strategies that bet on the performance of the economy as a whole (e.g., shorting index funds). So, perhaps look for more specific b... (read more)

Mirror neurons and the human empathy-sympathy system play a central role in my definition of consciousness, sentience and personhood or rather my dissolving the question of what is consciousness, sentience and personhood.

Eliezer, there was rapid scientific progress in late-1600s Western Europe even though wealth per capita was vastly lower than current levels. Ditto scientific and technological progress in Victorian England. Could it be that the reason you believe that an economic slump would stall R & D is that the global public-opinion apparatus has fooled you and those you have trusted on this issue? "But it is necessary for scientific progress," might have been a convenient false argument to convince certain sectors of public opinion whose are sceptical about other arguments about the need for pro-growth policies.

Buffy lives in Sunnydale, not Sunnyvale.

For if all goes well, the question "What is fun?" shall determine the shape and pattern of a billion galaxies.

I object to most of the things Eliezer wants for the far future, but of all the sentences he has written lately, that is probably the one I object to most unequivocally. A billion galaxies devoted to fun does not leave Earth-originating intelligence at lot to devote to things that might be actually important.

That is my dyspeptic two cents.

Not wanting to be in a rotten mood keeps me from closely reading this series on fun and the earlie... (read more)

Julian Morrison, thanks for that hypothesis!

Modifying yourself that way would just demonstrate that you value the means of fun more than the ends. Even if you could make that modification, would you?

Yes, Ben Jones, I sincerely would. (I also value the means of friendship, love, sex, pleasure, health, wealth, security, justice, fairness, my survival and the survival of my friends and loved ones more than the ends. I have a very compact system of terminal values. I.e., very few ultimate ends.)

I am fully aware that my saying that I value friendship as a means to an end rather than an end in itself... (read more)