My impression and my worry is that calling CEV a ‘plan for Friendliness content’, while true in a sense, is giving CEV-as-written too much credit as a stable conceptual framework. My default vision of someone working on CEV from my intuitive knee-jerk interpretation of your phrasing is of a person thinking hard for many hours about how to design a really clever meta level extrapolation process. This would probably be useful work, compared to many other research methods. But I would be kind of surprised if such research was at all eventually useful before the development of a significantly more thorough notion of preference, preferences as bounded computations, approximately embodied computation, overlapping computations, et cetera. I may well be underestimating the amount of creative juices you can get from informal models of something like extrapolation. It could be that you don’t have to get A.I.-precise to get an abstract theory whose implementation details aren’t necessarily prohibitively arbitrary, complex, or model-breaking. But I don’t think C.E.V. is at the correct level of abstraction to start such reasoning, and I’m worried that the first step of research on it wouldn’t involve an immediate and total conceptual reframing on a more precise/technical level. That said, there is assuredly less technical but still theoretical research to be done on existent systems of morality and moral reasoning, so I am not advocating against all research that isn’t exploring the foundations of computer science or anything.
I should note that the above are my impressions and I intend them as evidence more than advice. Someone who has experience jumping between original research on condensed matter physics and macroscopic complex systems modeling (as an example of a huge set of people) would know a lot more about the right way to tackle such problems.
Your second paragraph is of course valid and worth noting though it perhaps unfortunately doesn’t describe the folk I’m talking about, who are normally thinking on the humanity and not individual level. I should have stated that specifically. I should note for posterity that I am incredibly tired and (legally) drugged, and also was in my previous message, so although I feel sane I may not think so upon reflection.
Steps 2 and 3 are to defeat the auto-complete rule that in
certain cases turns two consecutive spaces into a period and
one space. The other steps are the
same as what you would do on a regular computer.
Note that you should only do this if you are typing a poem
or something else where you would use the HTML element.
Normally you should use paragraph breaks, which you get by
pressing “return” twice, so that a blank line is between the
paragraphs (same as on a regular computer).
What web browser are you using? I have a “return” button in Safari (on
an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1).
I might try HTML breaks next time.
Won’t work; the LW Markdown implementation doesn’t do raw HTML. (In
other words, when I typed “ ” in my previous comment and this one, I
didn’t need to do any escaping to get it to show up rather than turn
into a line break.)
If you don’t mind some hassle, it would probably work to write your
comment in the “Notes” app, then copy and paste it.
My impression and my worry is that calling CEV a ‘plan for Friendliness content’, while true in a sense, is giving CEV-as-written too much credit as a stable conceptual framework. My default vision of someone working on CEV from my intuitive knee-jerk interpretation of your phrasing is of a person thinking hard for many hours about how to design a really clever meta level extrapolation process. This would probably be useful work, compared to many other research methods. But I would be kind of surprised if such research was at all eventually useful before the development of a significantly more thorough notion of preference, preferences as bounded computations, approximately embodied computation, overlapping computations, et cetera. I may well be underestimating the amount of creative juices you can get from informal models of something like extrapolation. It could be that you don’t have to get A.I.-precise to get an abstract theory whose implementation details aren’t necessarily prohibitively arbitrary, complex, or model-breaking. But I don’t think C.E.V. is at the correct level of abstraction to start such reasoning, and I’m worried that the first step of research on it wouldn’t involve an immediate and total conceptual reframing on a more precise/technical level. That said, there is assuredly less technical but still theoretical research to be done on existent systems of morality and moral reasoning, so I am not advocating against all research that isn’t exploring the foundations of computer science or anything.
I should note that the above are my impressions and I intend them as evidence more than advice. Someone who has experience jumping between original research on condensed matter physics and macroscopic complex systems modeling (as an example of a huge set of people) would know a lot more about the right way to tackle such problems.
Your second paragraph is of course valid and worth noting though it perhaps unfortunately doesn’t describe the folk I’m talking about, who are normally thinking on the humanity and not individual level. I should have stated that specifically. I should note for posterity that I am incredibly tired and (legally) drugged, and also was in my previous message, so although I feel sane I may not think so upon reflection.
(Deleted this minor comment as no longer relevant, so instead: how do you add line breaks with iOS 4? 20 seconds of Google didn’t help me.)
Type a space.
Type a letter (doesn’t matter which).
Erase the letter.
Type another space.
Press “return”.
Steps 2 and 3 are to defeat the auto-complete rule that in certain cases turns two consecutive spaces into a period and one space. The other steps are the same as what you would do on a regular computer.
Note that you should only do this if you are typing a poem or something else where you would use the HTML
element. Normally you should use paragraph breaks, which you get by pressing “return” twice, so that a blank line is between the paragraphs (same as on a regular computer).
The problem is, I don’t think I have a return button? Ah well, it’s not a big deal at all. I might try HTML breaks next time.
What web browser are you using? I have a “return” button in Safari (on an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1).
Won’t work; the LW Markdown implementation doesn’t do raw HTML. (In other words, when I typed “
” in my previous comment and this one, I didn’t need to do any escaping to get it to show up rather than turn into a line break.)
If you don’t mind some hassle, it would probably work to write your comment in the “Notes” app, then copy and paste it.