CEV is not any old set of evolved values. It is the optimal set of evolved values; the set you get when everything goes exactly right. Of your two proposed futures, one of them is a better approximation to this than the other; I just can’t say which one, at this time, because of lack of computational power. That’s what we want a FAI for. :)
Instead of pushing Phil to accept the entirety of your position at once, it seems better to introduce some doubt first: Is it really very hard to do better than to just not interfere? If I have other values besides evolution, should I give them up so quickly?
Also, if Phil has already thought a lot about these questions and thinks he is justified in being pretty certain about his answers, then I’d be genuinely curious what his reasons are.
What criteria does the CEV-calculator use to choose among those options? I agree that significant computational power is also required, but it’s not sufficient.
If we were able to formally specify the algorithm by which a CEV calculator should extrapolate our values, we would already have solved the Friendliness problem; your query is FAI-complete. But informally, we can say that the CEV evaluates by whatever values it has at a given step in its algorithm, and that the initial values are the ones held by the programmers.
The problem with this kind of reasoning (as the OP makes plain) is that there’s no good reason to think such CEV maximization is even logically possible. Not only do we not have a solution, we don’t have a well-defined problem.
CEV is not any old set of evolved values. It is the optimal set of evolved values; the set you get when everything goes exactly right. Of your two proposed futures, one of them is a better approximation to this than the other; I just can’t say which one, at this time, because of lack of computational power. That’s what we want a FAI for. :)
Instead of pushing Phil to accept the entirety of your position at once, it seems better to introduce some doubt first: Is it really very hard to do better than to just not interfere? If I have other values besides evolution, should I give them up so quickly?
Also, if Phil has already thought a lot about these questions and thinks he is justified in being pretty certain about his answers, then I’d be genuinely curious what his reasons are.
I misread the nesting, and responded as though your comment were a critique of CEV, rather than Phil’s objection to CEV. So I talked a bit past you.
But you’re evading Wei_Dai’s question here.
What criteria does the CEV-calculator use to choose among those options? I agree that significant computational power is also required, but it’s not sufficient.
If we were able to formally specify the algorithm by which a CEV calculator should extrapolate our values, we would already have solved the Friendliness problem; your query is FAI-complete. But informally, we can say that the CEV evaluates by whatever values it has at a given step in its algorithm, and that the initial values are the ones held by the programmers.
The problem with this kind of reasoning (as the OP makes plain) is that there’s no good reason to think such CEV maximization is even logically possible. Not only do we not have a solution, we don’t have a well-defined problem.
(nods) Fair enough. I don’t especially endorse that, but at least it’s cogent.