I approve of Eliezer’s response to Caledonian’s insults and taunts because if Calendonian can continue the way he would like to continue then he will eventually attract others commenters who are habitually unecessarily combative, boastful or immoderate, which will eventually repel thoughtful readers from reading the comments. Now on to my comment.
I tentatively agree with Eliezer that taking the t out of Schroedinger’s equation makes it more beautiful although of course for my opinion to be worth very much I would have to spend at least a few months applying the equation to a large variety of physical situations and reflecting on that experience.
I wish Eliezer would start to apply the sophisticated sense of scientific aesthetics that he obviously has to not only models of reality but also systems of value because otherwise there is a good chance that the first engineered intelligence in the age of engineered intelligence will start out with a system of value approximately as ugly as a pre-Galilean theory of physics are ugly IMHO.
Although Eliezer’s plans include potent measures for refining the initial system of value, it would IMHO be less risky to start with a system of value of vastly better aesthetics—in the sense of the word aesthetics that we have been talking about for the last couple of days—than the systems of values that are popular or dominant in the human population at the present time. And I claim to know of systems of value of vastly better aesthetics. And yes, I see the significant risks in my thinking that my taste in values and morals is vastly better than most people’s!
In general, I wish I could persuade some of the people who are able to apply a sophisticated scientific sense of aesthetics to models of reality to drop their systematic unwillingness to apply the same aesthetic sensibility to moral principles and systems of valuing things. Although systems of value differ from models of reality in that there is nothing that could count as evidence for a system of values, considerations like parsimoniousness (Occam’s Razor) and the scientific sense of beauty IMHO apply to both.
I approve of Eliezer’s response to Caledonian’s insults and taunts because if Calendonian can continue the way he would like to continue then he will eventually attract others commenters who are habitually unecessarily combative, boastful or immoderate, which will eventually repel thoughtful readers from reading the comments. Now on to my comment.
I tentatively agree with Eliezer that taking the t out of Schroedinger’s equation makes it more beautiful although of course for my opinion to be worth very much I would have to spend at least a few months applying the equation to a large variety of physical situations and reflecting on that experience.
I wish Eliezer would start to apply the sophisticated sense of scientific aesthetics that he obviously has to not only models of reality but also systems of value because otherwise there is a good chance that the first engineered intelligence in the age of engineered intelligence will start out with a system of value approximately as ugly as a pre-Galilean theory of physics are ugly IMHO.
Although Eliezer’s plans include potent measures for refining the initial system of value, it would IMHO be less risky to start with a system of value of vastly better aesthetics—in the sense of the word aesthetics that we have been talking about for the last couple of days—than the systems of values that are popular or dominant in the human population at the present time. And I claim to know of systems of value of vastly better aesthetics. And yes, I see the significant risks in my thinking that my taste in values and morals is vastly better than most people’s!
In general, I wish I could persuade some of the people who are able to apply a sophisticated scientific sense of aesthetics to models of reality to drop their systematic unwillingness to apply the same aesthetic sensibility to moral principles and systems of valuing things. Although systems of value differ from models of reality in that there is nothing that could count as evidence for a system of values, considerations like parsimoniousness (Occam’s Razor) and the scientific sense of beauty IMHO apply to both.