I mean, once they both take pains to understand each other’s situation and have a good, long think about it, they would find that they will agree on the big issues and be able to easily accommodate their differences. I even suspect that overall they would value the fact that certain differences exist.
EVs can, of course, be exactly the same, or differ to some degree. But—provided we restrict ourselves to humans—the basic human needs and wants are really quite consistent across an overwhelming majority. There is enough material (on the web and in print) to support this.
Wedrifid (IMO) is making a mistake of confusing some situation dependent subgoals (like say “obliterate Israel” or “my way or the highway”) with high level goals.
I have not thought about extending CEV beyond human species, apart from taking into account the wishes of your example biologists etc. I suspect it would not work, because extrapolating wishes of “simpler” creatures would be impossible. See http://xkcd.com/605/.
Wedrifid (IMO) is making a mistake of confusing some situation dependent subgoals (like say “obliterate Israel” or “my way or the highway”) with high level goals.
You are mistaken. That I entertain no such confusion should be overwhelmingly clear from reading nearby comments.
I have not thought about extending CEV beyond human species, apart from taking into account the wishes of your example biologists etc. I suspect it would not work, because extrapolating wishes of “simpler” creatures would be impossible.
That sounds awfully convenient. If there really is a threshold of how “non-simple” a lifeform has to be to have coherently extrapolatable volitions, do you have any particular evidence that humans clear that threshold and, say, dolphins don’t?
For my part, I suspect strongly that any technique that arrives reliably at anything that even remotely approximates CEV for a human can also be used reliably on many other species. I can’t imagine what that technique would be, though.
(Just for clarity: that’s not to say one has to take other species’ volition into account, any more than one has to take other individuals’ volition into account.)
The lack of threshold is exactly the issue. If you include dolphins and chimpanzees, explicitly, you’d be in a position to apply the same reasoning to include parrots and dogs, then rodents and octopi, etc, etc.
Eventually you’ll slide far enough down this slippery slope to reach caterpillars and parasitic wasps. Now, what would a wasp want to do, if it understood how its acts affect the other creatures worthy of inclusion in the CEV?
This is what I see as the difficulty in extrapolating the wishes of simpler creatures. Perhaps in fact there is a coherent solution, but having only thought about this a little, I suspect there might not be one.
lack of threshold...then rodents...parasitic wasps
We don’t have to care. If everyone or nearly all were convinced that something less than 20 pounds had no moral value, or a person less than 40 days old, or whatever, that would be that.
Also, as some infinite sums have finite limits, I do not think that small things necessarily make summing humans’ or the Earth’s morality impossible.
Ah, OK. Sure, if your concern is that, if we extrapolated the volition of such creatures, we would find that they don’t cohere, I’m with you. I have similar concerns about humans, actually.
I’d thought you were saying that we’d be unable to extrapolate it in the first place, which is a different problem.
I mean, once they both take pains to understand each other’s situation and have a good, long think about it, they would find that they will agree on the big issues and be able to easily accommodate their differences. I even suspect that overall they would value the fact that certain differences exist.
EVs can, of course, be exactly the same, or differ to some degree. But—provided we restrict ourselves to humans—the basic human needs and wants are really quite consistent across an overwhelming majority. There is enough material (on the web and in print) to support this.
Wedrifid (IMO) is making a mistake of confusing some situation dependent subgoals (like say “obliterate Israel” or “my way or the highway”) with high level goals.
I have not thought about extending CEV beyond human species, apart from taking into account the wishes of your example biologists etc. I suspect it would not work, because extrapolating wishes of “simpler” creatures would be impossible. See http://xkcd.com/605/.
You are mistaken. That I entertain no such confusion should be overwhelmingly clear from reading nearby comments.
That sounds awfully convenient. If there really is a threshold of how “non-simple” a lifeform has to be to have coherently extrapolatable volitions, do you have any particular evidence that humans clear that threshold and, say, dolphins don’t?
For my part, I suspect strongly that any technique that arrives reliably at anything that even remotely approximates CEV for a human can also be used reliably on many other species. I can’t imagine what that technique would be, though.
(Just for clarity: that’s not to say one has to take other species’ volition into account, any more than one has to take other individuals’ volition into account.)
The lack of threshold is exactly the issue. If you include dolphins and chimpanzees, explicitly, you’d be in a position to apply the same reasoning to include parrots and dogs, then rodents and octopi, etc, etc.
Eventually you’ll slide far enough down this slippery slope to reach caterpillars and parasitic wasps. Now, what would a wasp want to do, if it understood how its acts affect the other creatures worthy of inclusion in the CEV?
This is what I see as the difficulty in extrapolating the wishes of simpler creatures. Perhaps in fact there is a coherent solution, but having only thought about this a little, I suspect there might not be one.
We don’t have to care. If everyone or nearly all were convinced that something less than 20 pounds had no moral value, or a person less than 40 days old, or whatever, that would be that.
Also, as some infinite sums have finite limits, I do not think that small things necessarily make summing humans’ or the Earth’s morality impossible.
Ah, OK. Sure, if your concern is that, if we extrapolated the volition of such creatures, we would find that they don’t cohere, I’m with you. I have similar concerns about humans, actually.
I’d thought you were saying that we’d be unable to extrapolate it in the first place, which is a different problem.