Tyrrell: The Babyeaters don’t seem to exactly have genes, in the sense that we think about them. I didn’t entirely understand how the information transfer/birth of the next generation works with regards to the crystal growth thing. Either way though, there would seem to be a prisoner’s dilemma of sorts with regards to that. I’m not sure about this, but let’s say we could do unto the Babyeaters without them being able to do unto us, with regards to altering them (even against their will) for the sake of our values. Wouldn’t that sort of be a form of Prisoner’s Dilemma with regards to, say, other species with different values than us and more powerful than us that could do the same to us? Wouldn’t the same metarationality results hold? I’m not entirely sure about this, but..
Eliezer: “Humankind, we possess a generalized faculty to feel what others feel.” Huh? Very good story, but the quoted bit is perhaps the single most puzzling thing I’ve seen so far in this entire sequence. If that line is meant to be interpreted as “all possible feelings”, ie, really general… Then how would that work? Aren’t specific types of feelings associated with specific types of cognitive hardware? How the fluff would they be able to feel all possible types of feelings that all possible types of feeling beings (that is, beings that do the sort of thing that we’d call “feeling”) feel? I’m assuming stuff like “brain scan/emulate sections theirof” is not the type of tech that you’re allowing in this setting, right?
(And yes, I know the MST3K mantra. As I said, this way is more fun, though! (If we’re instead just being annoying, and you’d rather we wait with these nitpicks until you finish the story, well… say so.)
Tyrrell: The Babyeaters don’t seem to exactly have genes, in the sense that we think about them. I didn’t entirely understand how the information transfer/birth of the next generation works with regards to the crystal growth thing. Either way though, there would seem to be a prisoner’s dilemma of sorts with regards to that. I’m not sure about this, but let’s say we could do unto the Babyeaters without them being able to do unto us, with regards to altering them (even against their will) for the sake of our values. Wouldn’t that sort of be a form of Prisoner’s Dilemma with regards to, say, other species with different values than us and more powerful than us that could do the same to us? Wouldn’t the same metarationality results hold? I’m not entirely sure about this, but..
Eliezer: “Humankind, we possess a generalized faculty to feel what others feel.” Huh? Very good story, but the quoted bit is perhaps the single most puzzling thing I’ve seen so far in this entire sequence. If that line is meant to be interpreted as “all possible feelings”, ie, really general… Then how would that work? Aren’t specific types of feelings associated with specific types of cognitive hardware? How the fluff would they be able to feel all possible types of feelings that all possible types of feeling beings (that is, beings that do the sort of thing that we’d call “feeling”) feel? I’m assuming stuff like “brain scan/emulate sections theirof” is not the type of tech that you’re allowing in this setting, right?
(And yes, I know the MST3K mantra. As I said, this way is more fun, though! (If we’re instead just being annoying, and you’d rather we wait with these nitpicks until you finish the story, well… say so.)