This is a linkpost for https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.08289
Interesting, I missed this one. Thanks for linking it!
I'm mostly left after reading this unsure what to do with it though. That is, although it engages ideas I was not fully aware of and does serve a purpose of spreading information between disciplines, I'm left looking for something that much moves the discussion forward. Yes, we know human values are complex and grounded in biology and society, but I'm not sure how to use this information to make progress and I don't feel like I got that from the paper either. I'd be interested to know if there were more speculative discussions that got cut from the paper that makes stronger suggestions of what to do with this information.
I felt similarly. I'd also like to see them dig more into their mammalian values + human cognition + evolution of human society/culture. Specifically, (1) defending the breakdown as a good account of human values and (2) separating out their claims about values in human cultures (and being a bit clearer about whether they claim that cultural values are less likely 'true' values, however that might be cashed out) and about values arising from historical incident
Hmm, I don't see a distinction to be made in terms of values that come from culture vs. from other places other than if you are simply interested in the etiology of those values. What do you have in mind when you reference "'true' values"?
It wasn't clear to me from the paper if they thought values that came from our contingent history could be worth preserving or promoting. For example, they might think they engage our same moral intuitions as mammalian values without being worth defending
Yes. The idea about using mammalian values as a starting point is interesting and is elaborated, but "human cognition" and "human culture" look like place holders for complexity.
His division of mammalian values on 7 behavioural traits is also questionable, as I would use more general level of basic drives, that is survival and replication (+ some instrumental; in that case SEEK and PLAY is part of learning behaviour).
I think the 7 traits part comes for existing literature on the subject. This is the book referenced (didn't look it up, though):
J. Panksepp and L. Biven, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. WW Norton & Company, 2012.
I actually thought that part seemed pretty reasonable. I've not thought about the specifics deeply, but I would basically expect it to look something like a number of modules focused on limited scope being repurposed and interacting to motivate us in ways that give us our values. Whether the particular modules are right or not I don't know, but they all seemed like the sorts of things I would expect. I don't actually expect to find modules in the mind that are specifically focused on survival and replication even if they exist because evolutionary pressures to do those two things shaped them over generations.
I got that they are from the book, which describes mammal behaviour. I just suggested another clarification of the same features based evolutionary biology expectations. For example, my internal model is that if I observe an animal particular behaviour, I expect that this type of the behaviour is either for survival or for reproduction.
I also think that there should be literature about it, but I didn't search it yet.
Survival-reproduction model is simpler and could be easily presented as a math model. For complex social mammals this includes activities like learning and social behaviour, but they also have survival fitness.
Anyone know how this relates to Armstrong & Mindermann showing that you can't infer the values of an irrational agent? I've not read their paper, but I am not sure if the mammalian values can count as the "normative assumptions" they mention in the abstract
I think they do, although they are probably not adequate to all cases where you need to make normative assumptions.