Eliezer: Isn’t your possible future self’s disapproval one highly plausible reason for not spending lots of resources developing slowly?
Honestly, the long recognized awfulness of classic descriptions of heaven seems like counter-evidence to the thesis of “Stumbling on Happiness”. I can’t be confident regarding how good I am at knowing what would make me happy, so if the evidence that people in general are bad at knowing what will make them happy I should expect to be bad at it, but if I know that people in general are comically awful at knowing what will make them happy compared to myself and to most people the judgment of whom I respect then that fact basically screens off the standard empirical evidence of bad judgment as it applies to me.
Phil: Eliezer has repeatedly said that ems (formerly uploads) are people. Eliezer, can you please clarify this point in a simple direct comment aimed at Phil?
Komponisto: “Moral progress takes work, just like technological and intellectual progress. Indeed we should expect some correlation among these modes of progress, should we not?”
Honestly, this seemed obvious before the 20th century when the Germans showed that it was possible to be plausibly the world’s most scientifically advanced culture but morally backward. Our civilization still doesn’t know what to make of that. We obviously see correlation, but also outliers.
Eliezer: Isn’t your possible future self’s disapproval one highly plausible reason for not spending lots of resources developing slowly?
Honestly, the long recognized awfulness of classic descriptions of heaven seems like counter-evidence to the thesis of “Stumbling on Happiness”. I can’t be confident regarding how good I am at knowing what would make me happy, so if the evidence that people in general are bad at knowing what will make them happy I should expect to be bad at it, but if I know that people in general are comically awful at knowing what will make them happy compared to myself and to most people the judgment of whom I respect then that fact basically screens off the standard empirical evidence of bad judgment as it applies to me.
Phil: Eliezer has repeatedly said that ems (formerly uploads) are people. Eliezer, can you please clarify this point in a simple direct comment aimed at Phil?
Komponisto: “Moral progress takes work, just like technological and intellectual progress. Indeed we should expect some correlation among these modes of progress, should we not?” Honestly, this seemed obvious before the 20th century when the Germans showed that it was possible to be plausibly the world’s most scientifically advanced culture but morally backward. Our civilization still doesn’t know what to make of that. We obviously see correlation, but also outliers.