But given that this example is so controversial, even if it were right why would you use it—at least, why would you use it if you had any other example at all to turn to?
Humans are the only real-world example we have of human-level agents, and natural selection is the only process we know of for actually producing them.
SGD, singular learning theory, etc. haven’t actually produced human-level minds or a usable theory of how such minds work, and arguably haven’t produced anything that even fits into the natural category of minds at all, yet. (Maybe they will pretty soon, when applied at greater scale or in combination with additional innovations, either of which could result in the weird-correlates problem emerging.)
Also, the actual claims in the quote seem either literally true (humans don’t care about foods that they model as useful for inclusive genetic fitness) or plausible / not obviously false (when you grow minds [to human capabilities levels], they end up caring about a bunch of weird correlates). I think you’re reading the quote as saying something stronger / more specific than it actually is.
Humans are the only real-world example we have of human-level agents, and natural selection is the only process we know of for actually producing them.
SGD, singular learning theory, etc. haven’t actually produced human-level minds or a usable theory of how such minds work, and arguably haven’t produced anything that even fits into the natural category of minds at all, yet. (Maybe they will pretty soon, when applied at greater scale or in combination with additional innovations, either of which could result in the weird-correlates problem emerging.)
Also, the actual claims in the quote seem either literally true (humans don’t care about foods that they model as useful for inclusive genetic fitness) or plausible / not obviously false (when you grow minds [to human capabilities levels], they end up caring about a bunch of weird correlates). I think you’re reading the quote as saying something stronger / more specific than it actually is.