LESSWRONG
LW

All of PK2's Comments + Replies

Contaminated by Optimism
PK2-10

It seems to me like the simplest way to solve friendliness is: "Ok AI, I'm friendly so do what I tell you to do and confirm with me before taking any action." It is much simpler to program a goal system that responds to direct commands than to somehow try to infuse 'friendliness' into the AI. Granted, marketing wise a 'friendliness' infused AI sounds better because it makes those who seek to build such AI seem altruistic. Anyone saying they intend to implement the former seems selfish and power hungry.

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1Lapsed_Lurker
Wasn't that trick tried with Windows Vista, and people were so annoyed by continually being asked trivial "can I do this?" questions that they turned off the security?
Interpersonal Morality
PK200

To clarify my question, what is the point of all this talk about "morality" if it all amounts to "just do what you think is right"? I mean other than the futility of looking for The True Source of morality outside yourself. I guess I may have answered my own question if this was the whole point. So now what? How do I know what is moral and what isn't? I mean I can answer the easy question but how do I solve the hard ones? I was expecting to get easy answers to moral questions from your theory Eliezer. I feel cheated now.

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-2Peterdjones
The argument that morality must have a Source is conditioned by the way most people encounter moral exhortation, thtough religion. The idea is that moral principles are compulsions or obligations, which means, in turn, that they are something like edicts or commandments. Whilst there are lots of humans who can offer opinions on what is compulsory, they are all subjective opinions: no-one can lay down an objective edict. However, the basic idea of a "source" merges two separate ideas: who tells you about some item of knowledge, and what makes it true. The mathematical truths relayed to you by your teachers are objectively true, not because teachers are Objective Sources, but because of the ways they are proved an justified — which is not by the teacher personally. The set of things tha are true just because someone says so is small. Eye witness testimony, personal reminiscences, reports of subjective states: not many things work on the Source system, and there is no reason to assume ethics does.
Interpersonal Morality
PK240

What is "morality" for?(not morality) The "morality" concept seems so slippery at this point that it might be better to use other words to more clearly communicate meaning.

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Setting Up Metaethics
PK200

@Tiiba I think you nailed it on the head. That is pretty much my view but you worded it better than I ever could. There is no The Meta-Morality. There are multiple possible memes(moralities and meta-moralities) and some work better than others at producing and keeping civilizations from falling apart.

@Eliezer I am very interested in reading your meta-morality theory. Do you think it will be universally compelling to humans, or at least non brain damaged humans? Assuming there are humans out there who would not accept the theory, I am curious how those who ... (read more)

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Does Your Morality Care What You Think?
PK230

Question for Obert: Suppose there are intelligent aliens in a galaxy far far away... There is a pretty good chance they will discover math. They might use different symbols and they might represent their data differently but they will discover math because the universe pretty much runs on math. To them 2 + 3 will equal 5. Would they discover morality? Would their 'morality' be the same thing as our 'morality' here? Does morality converge into one thing like math does, no matter where you start from?

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-4buybuydandavis
There are some aliens here on earth already. Chimpanzees. They're pretty alien. Do they have math? If superintelligent aliens found us, would they think we had math? The universe runs on math? Really? I'd say the universe runs on the universe. We model how the universe runs using math. The map is not the territory.