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The curse of identity
preferredanonymous00

"We run on corrupted hardware: our minds are composed of many modules, and the modules that evolved to make us seem impressive and gather allies are also evolved to subvert the ones holding our conscious beliefs. Even when we believe that we are working on something that may ultimately determine the fate of humanity, our signaling modules may hijack our goals so as to optimize for persuading outsiders that we are working on the goal, instead of optimizing for achieving the goal!"

I'm sorry, while I agree whole-heartedly with this assessment, your ... (read more)

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The curse of identity
preferredanonymous-30

""good" isn't a natural property."

That's where you're fundamentally wrong.

You can't disprove something by defining it it to be non-existent. The term "good" very much describes something real (and natural), otherwise we wouldn't be able to think of it.

Put simply its just the act of fulfilling ourselves, and our purpose. We have a vague notion of good actually is, and are mislead to believe that it doesn't exist (as in your case), for precisely the very reason that we aren't perfect at getting what we need. We get what we want,... (read more)

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2DaFranker
Perhaps you should read (or re-read more carefully) the A Human's Guide to Words sequence. The term good, by your description, describes something real and natural. Again by your description, X being "real and natural" is required for being able to think of X. How does any of this reject the statement that "There is no point in eventspace that has the natural 'Good' property"? (which I infer to be the intended meaning of the statement you can "fundamentally wrong") That some event, decision, action, thing, X is "good" is a property of the mind, of the map. If there is a Red-Nosed Wiggin in front of you, and knowledge of this fact rates as +2 on your utility function, this is a property of your utility function, not of the Red-Nosed Wiggin or of the spacetime field "in front of you". With my understanding of proper or common usage of the term "good", there is no case where "good" is an inherent property of the territory that is unbreakable, unviolable, and definitely belongs to the territory itself, such that no map could ever model this as "not good" without being testably and verifiably wrong. (I don't really expect a response from the author this comment replies to, but would greatly appreciate any help, hints, tips or constructive criticism of some kind on my above reasoning)
1DSimon
That doesn't seem like a consistently valid rule. As counter-examples, here are some words that we have thought of, and that we can use consistently and appropriately in context, but that do not describe real or natural things: * Unicorn * Witch * Luminiferous aether * Bottomless pit * Immovable object * Irresistible force * Philosopher's stone * Faster-than-light communication * Ideal gas * Frictionless surface * Spherical cow * Halting oracle * "Yo mama's so fat she has different area codes for the phones in her left and right pockets"
0thomblake
One of the better definitions, and the one in accord with Aristotle. Though perhaps not the most popular definition.