Eliezer: “A lot of philosophy seems to me to suffer from “naive philosophical realism”—the belief that philosophical debates are about things that automatically and directly exist as propertied objects floating out there in the void.”
Well, we do this since we can’t fully apprehend reality as a whole, and so must break it down into more manageable components.
I can tell my husband, “If you had not fed the cat, then I would have fed her,” because I had such an intention from before the cat was fed, and I remember having said intention.
However, can I really ever know what would have happened if my husband had not fed the cat?
Maybe the sun would have exploded, because reality is deterministic, and there was nothing else that could have happened, and such a blatent violation of causality would have blown open the fabric of time...
But this is not an at all useful way of thinking about the world. If we submit to fatalism then there isn’t much point in trying to determine anything ourselves, including how to create an fAI and live forever… If we do it, we do it.
Likewise, counterfactuals are important for considering how different variables in our actions shape their outcomes.
“If you had hit me, I would have left you and not come back.”
Could be true… could be false… What’s important?
Don’t hit her next time!
“If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have.”
What’s important?
We need to be very careful in protecting the safety of progressive politicians in the future, like Obama, so they don’t go the way of the Kennedy… After all, it happened to Bobby too.
Eliezer: “A lot of philosophy seems to me to suffer from “naive philosophical realism”—the belief that philosophical debates are about things that automatically and directly exist as propertied objects floating out there in the void.”
Well, we do this since we can’t fully apprehend reality as a whole, and so must break it down into more manageable components.
I can tell my husband, “If you had not fed the cat, then I would have fed her,” because I had such an intention from before the cat was fed, and I remember having said intention.
However, can I really ever know what would have happened if my husband had not fed the cat? Maybe the sun would have exploded, because reality is deterministic, and there was nothing else that could have happened, and such a blatent violation of causality would have blown open the fabric of time...
But this is not an at all useful way of thinking about the world. If we submit to fatalism then there isn’t much point in trying to determine anything ourselves, including how to create an fAI and live forever… If we do it, we do it.
Likewise, counterfactuals are important for considering how different variables in our actions shape their outcomes.
“If you had hit me, I would have left you and not come back.” Could be true… could be false… What’s important? Don’t hit her next time!
“If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have.” What’s important? We need to be very careful in protecting the safety of progressive politicians in the future, like Obama, so they don’t go the way of the Kennedy… After all, it happened to Bobby too.