In response to Fake Morality
Comment author: Stefan_Pernar 09 November 2007 03:57:33AM -2 points [-]

The very fact that a religious person would be afraid of God withdrawing Its threat to punish them for committing murder, shows that they have a revulsion of murder which is independent of whether God punishes murder or not. If they had no sense that murder was wrong independently of divine retribution, the prospect of God not punishing murder would be no more existentially horrifying than the prospect of God not punishing sneezing.

What a religious person realizes with such a fear is that truth matters – just not in a sense one would assume intuitively.

Philosopher 1 is promoting altruism on the basis of selfishness Philosopher 2 is promoting selfishness on the basis of altruism

It is a contradiction. But only in thought – not in reality. For which our language is to blame as it is poorly adapted to where the solution to said contradiction lies. The solution lies in the fact that both are in fact promoting to increase group fitness:

The first one on the fallacy that a higher paid job contributes (aka increases the fitness of) only to his personal fitness while in reality the society as a whole benefits.

The second one on the fallacy that his recommendations are truly altruistic while they are actually increasing the fitness of society as a whole including himself.

Both beliefs thus become false while still increasing fitness. That’s what I call 'irrationalist’s edge.

Comment author: Stefan_Pernar 04 November 2007 04:28:44AM 0 points [-]

Great to see more thoughts on evolution from you Eliezer - good stuff.

In response to Fake Justification
Comment author: Stefan_Pernar 02 November 2007 03:35:09AM 1 point [-]

Nick, truly fascinating read. Thank you. Although I have not read Bostrom's paper prior to today I am glad to find that we come to largely identical conclusions. My core claim 'What is good is what increases fitness' does not mean that I argue for the replacement of humanity with non eudaemonic fitness maximizing agents as Bostrom calls them.

There are two paths to maximizing an individual's fitness:

A) Change an indiidual's genetic/memetic makeup to increase it's fitness in a given environment B) Change an individual's environment to increase it's genetic/memetic fitness

In my AI friendliness theory I argue for option B) using a friendly AGI in which in essence represents Bostrom's singleton.

In response to Fake Justification
Comment author: Stefan_Pernar 02 November 2007 12:55:57AM 0 points [-]

Elizier: It is pure Judeo-Christian-Islamic exceptionalism, I regret to inform you, to think that failing to believe in the Bible God signifies anything more than failing to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

This is plain wrong - the former belief increases fitness while the later does not. Look at religion in the light of rational choice aka game theory instead of plainly true or false. Big difference.

Benoit: Stefan Pernar, you are right, christianity is fitter than atheism in an evolutionary kind of way. It's members reproduce, spread, divide and conquer like cancer. That's why they exist. But is that such a good thing? Utility wize cancer's strategy is widely unoptimal imo.

I argue that it is a good thing in the context of my AI friendliness theory. However I do believe there is something better that could out compete and eventually marginalize it.

Oh and Stephan, why not have instead something like the Church or Reality an open source reason based religion, or even an atheistic compassion based religion like buddhism? Instead often violent divide and conquer based religions such as the abrahamic religions you mentioned. These religions are very immoral if you ask me.

I totally agree. In fact in my writings I repeatedly mention Buddhist teachings as their key concepts seem to arise naturally from my thoughts on AI friendliness. Before you dismiss this as new age mumbo-jumbo I suggest reading pages 105 following of my book on Ai friendliness.

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