It gives a superficial facility with social interaction but with no substance behind it.
If you watch this video you can hear a 8 year old girl being asked if she wants to be a “helper”. She replies that it feels like an honor to her.
Maybe she just learnt to say that and doesn’t know what it means, but isn’t that some sort of Chinese room argument? It doesn’t seem that they are unhappy helping others or that it is some sort of impulse reaction without any involvement of higher cognition.
And Willians Syndrome is not just marked by disability but, if you read the Wikipedia article you linked to, “has been described as a “cocktail party” type personality, and exhibit a remarkable blend of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.”
You probably don’t mean to imply this, but your comment makes it sound like that you believe the particular friendliness and warmth exhibited by humans with Williams Syndrome to be somehow unworthy compared to the rational choice taken by an high IQ individual that is exhibiting altruism.
But if a paperclip maximizer can be rational and yet not exhibit any amount of friendliness, then this means that it is ultimately a subjective-objective agent-dependent value exhibited by those who happen to feature a utility-function that assigns non-negligible weight to the unconditional well-being of other agents.
You probably don’t mean to imply this, but your comment makes it sound like that you believe the particular friendliness and warmth exhibited by humans with Williams Syndrome to be somehow unworthy compared to the rational choice taken by an high IQ individual that is exhibiting altruism.
I never said anything about rationality, IQ, or altruism, so I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I’m saying that friendliness is the only thing that people with Williams syndrome have in their favour—as compared with the general public. It doesn’t outweigh the deficits of mental and physical function.
And among the general public, people can be friendly anyway without general brain damage.
If you watch this video you can hear a 8 year old girl being asked if she wants to be a “helper”. She replies that it feels like an honor to her.
Maybe she just learnt to say that and doesn’t know what it means, but isn’t that some sort of Chinese room argument? It doesn’t seem that they are unhappy helping others or that it is some sort of impulse reaction without any involvement of higher cognition.
And Willians Syndrome is not just marked by disability but, if you read the Wikipedia article you linked to, “has been described as a “cocktail party” type personality, and exhibit a remarkable blend of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.”
You probably don’t mean to imply this, but your comment makes it sound like that you believe the particular friendliness and warmth exhibited by humans with Williams Syndrome to be somehow unworthy compared to the rational choice taken by an high IQ individual that is exhibiting altruism.
But if a paperclip maximizer can be rational and yet not exhibit any amount of friendliness, then this means that it is ultimately a subjective-objective agent-dependent value exhibited by those who happen to feature a utility-function that assigns non-negligible weight to the unconditional well-being of other agents.
I never said anything about rationality, IQ, or altruism, so I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I’m saying that friendliness is the only thing that people with Williams syndrome have in their favour—as compared with the general public. It doesn’t outweigh the deficits of mental and physical function.
And among the general public, people can be friendly anyway without general brain damage.
I am sorry, it seems I mixed some of the comments I read together. I should avoid reading comments via Google Reader/be more careful.