Williams Syndrome (WS) was discussed a while back on LW in the context of human enhancement.
I was fascinated to learn about WS. It’s like the opposite of autism (or at least autistic savantism): good at social engagement, and bad at analytical thought.
I don’t know if this, like autism, has varying degrees, but if it does, I’ve known at least one person far out on the scale.
I don’t see how Williams Syndrome could be a spectrum, since it’s caused by the deletion of specific genes; they’re either there or they’re not. I do recall one writer (perhaps Simon Baron-Cohen?) speculating that there may be a disorder spectrum opposite autism which has received little recognition because society is much more accommodating of people who’re socially fluent but analytically inept than the reverse.
Not really, but I thought it hints at some important insights and problems. What if it turns out that certain races are more kind than others, how would such knowledge influence CEV? If there are strong genetic factors strongly determining such important human values as altruism and general warmth, the opposite could be the case as well. This all leads to the question, what does it mean to be human? There might be some incoherence if the psychological unity of humans does depend on as little as 25 genes. Therefore CEV could turn out to cause a minority of humans to suffer or be discriminated due to their extreme psychological otherness, because it ultimately has a bearing on their interpretation of ethical questions.
...coherent extrapolated volition is our choices and the actions we would collectively take if “we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, and had grown up closer together.
If important human values are as strongly determined by genetic factors as shown by people with Williams Syndrome, then knowing more won’t make the volition of different people with different genetic makeups converge.
Letting the future of the universe be determined by a quick snapshot of the different fraction of human demographic groups… The idea that the same provably friendly AI would do something radically different with the universe if its developed in the decade that Finns represent 60% of the world’s population compared to a decade later when they represent 10% sounds very scary but plausible.
I’ve been thinking about these questions for several years. How I deal with this is that I accept (real) value diversity.
Inhuman respect for sovereignty paired with a strong unbiased recognition of self-determination should be enough as long as people give up desires for universal standards of morality outside their pocket of matter.
People are fine with this in theory but are utterly aghast when I give them even examples of mildly different value systems. This makes me very pessimistic, since the only qualitatively different probable scenario in my mind seems to be all out value warfare.
And that brings it back to a Darwinian struggle, which is likley to eventually destroy value for all currently existing groups.
Fascinating, thanks for the link.
Any particular link to rationality?
Williams Syndrome (WS) was discussed a while back on LW in the context of human enhancement.
I was fascinated to learn about WS. It’s like the opposite of autism (or at least autistic savantism): good at social engagement, and bad at analytical thought.
I don’t know if this, like autism, has varying degrees, but if it does, I’ve known at least one person far out on the scale.
I don’t see how Williams Syndrome could be a spectrum, since it’s caused by the deletion of specific genes; they’re either there or they’re not. I do recall one writer (perhaps Simon Baron-Cohen?) speculating that there may be a disorder spectrum opposite autism which has received little recognition because society is much more accommodating of people who’re socially fluent but analytically inept than the reverse.
Not really, but I thought it hints at some important insights and problems. What if it turns out that certain races are more kind than others, how would such knowledge influence CEV? If there are strong genetic factors strongly determining such important human values as altruism and general warmth, the opposite could be the case as well. This all leads to the question, what does it mean to be human? There might be some incoherence if the psychological unity of humans does depend on as little as 25 genes. Therefore CEV could turn out to cause a minority of humans to suffer or be discriminated due to their extreme psychological otherness, because it ultimately has a bearing on their interpretation of ethical questions.
If important human values are as strongly determined by genetic factors as shown by people with Williams Syndrome, then knowing more won’t make the volition of different people with different genetic makeups converge.
Letting the future of the universe be determined by a quick snapshot of the different fraction of human demographic groups… The idea that the same provably friendly AI would do something radically different with the universe if its developed in the decade that Finns represent 60% of the world’s population compared to a decade later when they represent 10% sounds very scary but plausible.
I’ve been thinking about these questions for several years. How I deal with this is that I accept (real) value diversity.
Inhuman respect for sovereignty paired with a strong unbiased recognition of self-determination should be enough as long as people give up desires for universal standards of morality outside their pocket of matter.
People are fine with this in theory but are utterly aghast when I give them even examples of mildly different value systems. This makes me very pessimistic, since the only qualitatively different probable scenario in my mind seems to be all out value warfare.
And that brings it back to a Darwinian struggle, which is likley to eventually destroy value for all currently existing groups.