Useful as an example of the difficulty of building consequentialists- “we can’t even solve chess, for crying out loud!”- but I don’t see it as particularly useful as an explanation of human values.
Although, sifting it more I think I may see the gemstones that you may be seeing. The value seems to be in saying “the goal of chess is completely described: be in a position where your enemy cannot prevent you from capturing his king” and “the goal of evolution is completely described: maximize inclusive genetic fitness”, and then comparing the subgoals explicitly. Status, say, is the analogy of board position- it only leads to higher genetic fitness on average in some broad way, but it’s a cheap and effective heuristic for doing so, just like good board position is a cheap and effective (but not guaranteed!) heuristic for winning at chess.
Status, say, is the analogy of board position- it only leads to higher genetic fitness on average in some broad way, but it’s a cheap and effective heuristic for doing so, just like good board position is a cheap and effective (but not guaranteed!) heuristic for winning at chess
Useful as an example of the difficulty of building consequentialists- “we can’t even solve chess, for crying out loud!”- but I don’t see it as particularly useful as an explanation of human values.
Although, sifting it more I think I may see the gemstones that you may be seeing. The value seems to be in saying “the goal of chess is completely described: be in a position where your enemy cannot prevent you from capturing his king” and “the goal of evolution is completely described: maximize inclusive genetic fitness”, and then comparing the subgoals explicitly. Status, say, is the analogy of board position- it only leads to higher genetic fitness on average in some broad way, but it’s a cheap and effective heuristic for doing so, just like good board position is a cheap and effective (but not guaranteed!) heuristic for winning at chess.
Yep, basically what I was getting at.