You did a good job with this post and in dealing with the difficult original topic, a topic others may have been shying away from because of its difficulty (that’s my guess) - in any case, it shows up here less often than I would expect, for whatever reasons.
Unpacking the concept of “difficult”, it seems your writings never suffer from specific defects caused by impatience reading, thinking, or writing; clicking “comment” before finishing, transitioning from reading to writing before understanding, that sort of thing.
the thing might just shut itself down when we run it
This is information. It would be more useful than you imply.
The small group size of living scientific Nobel Prize winners (or any other likely subset of humans) poses certain problems for a selective CEV that the universal CEV lacks. For example, they might all come under the influence of a single person or ideology that is not conducive to the needs of wider humanity.
I’m not sure which of two meanings you intended, so I will just explain my view (that I think you probably intended) directly, in a way that pedantically keeps levels separate:
No one cares about the properties of ideologies of humans extrapolated from any more than they care about the color of those humans’ clothes, people just care about the properties of the end product. If the product is the same whether the clothes are red or blue, and the same whether humans’ ideologies are parochially good or universally good or universally bad, then those things are irrelevant.
Shutting up and multiplying demands that
Speaking of the way, if you speak overmuch of the way, you will speak of the way, and speak of the way, and speak of the way, and still be speaking of the way, and continue speaking of the way, still speaking of the way, speaking and speaking of the way, your schedule will be full, full, full of it, of speaking of it, speaking, that is, of the way, that is, speaking of it, verbally, aloud, written, typed, in cursive, in curses, when cursing, speaking overmuch of the way, the way, the way, the way and the way, also, the way, and as for how to speak according to the way...that’s another subject entirely.
It is put better as the last thing here but it would be a ludicrous sin to quote from that section directly. In any case that document’s not scripture, a mere four of the twelve have 95% of the value there, or more if one considers the others detract from those four. Or perhaps I only possess four of twelve equal virtues and am telling myself only four matter to make myself feel strong. Regardless, of them, the last of the twelve is the most important.
You say in a comment on this page: “there is nothing rational about interpreting words like “surely” literally when they are obviously being used in a casual or innocently rhetorical way”.
No one cares about the properties of ideologies of humans extrapolated from any more than they care about the color of those humans’ clothes, people just care about the properties of the end product. If the product is the same whether the clothes are red or blue, and the same whether humans’ ideologies are parochially good or universally good or universally bad, then those things are irrelevant.
That is certainly true (the fact that only the output of the dynamic is overwhelmingly important is what I was getting at with those excessive mentions of “shut up and multiply”). But if the implementation of the initial dynamic is less than ideal, then there may not be perfect independence between the output and any strong ideological strain or value that someone managed to implant in a relatively small group of people.
Knowing more, thinking faster and growing up closer together may very well render such a problem completely irrelevant, but that doesn’t constitute a reason to assume that these specifications will do so given their implementation by human programmers. This is a point in favour of the universal CEV, but similar considerations apply in favour of the selective CEV (as I attempted to show in my essay).
Stop doing that!
I’ve retracted that comment. I suppose that the careful use of probabilistic terms is important in general.
You did a good job with this post and in dealing with the difficult original topic, a topic others may have been shying away from because of its difficulty (that’s my guess) - in any case, it shows up here less often than I would expect, for whatever reasons.
Unpacking the concept of “difficult”, it seems your writings never suffer from specific defects caused by impatience reading, thinking, or writing; clicking “comment” before finishing, transitioning from reading to writing before understanding, that sort of thing.
This is information. It would be more useful than you imply.
I’m not sure which of two meanings you intended, so I will just explain my view (that I think you probably intended) directly, in a way that pedantically keeps levels separate:
No one cares about the properties of ideologies of humans extrapolated from any more than they care about the color of those humans’ clothes, people just care about the properties of the end product. If the product is the same whether the clothes are red or blue, and the same whether humans’ ideologies are parochially good or universally good or universally bad, then those things are irrelevant.
Speaking of the way, if you speak overmuch of the way, you will speak of the way, and speak of the way, and speak of the way, and still be speaking of the way, and continue speaking of the way, still speaking of the way, speaking and speaking of the way, your schedule will be full, full, full of it, of speaking of it, speaking, that is, of the way, that is, speaking of it, verbally, aloud, written, typed, in cursive, in curses, when cursing, speaking overmuch of the way, the way, the way, the way and the way, also, the way, and as for how to speak according to the way...that’s another subject entirely.
It is put better as the last thing here but it would be a ludicrous sin to quote from that section directly. In any case that document’s not scripture, a mere four of the twelve have 95% of the value there, or more if one considers the others detract from those four. Or perhaps I only possess four of twelve equal virtues and am telling myself only four matter to make myself feel strong. Regardless, of them, the last of the twelve is the most important.
You say in a comment on this page: “there is nothing rational about interpreting words like “surely” literally when they are obviously being used in a casual or innocently rhetorical way”.
Stop doing that!
Thanks!
That is certainly true (the fact that only the output of the dynamic is overwhelmingly important is what I was getting at with those excessive mentions of “shut up and multiply”). But if the implementation of the initial dynamic is less than ideal, then there may not be perfect independence between the output and any strong ideological strain or value that someone managed to implant in a relatively small group of people.
Knowing more, thinking faster and growing up closer together may very well render such a problem completely irrelevant, but that doesn’t constitute a reason to assume that these specifications will do so given their implementation by human programmers. This is a point in favour of the universal CEV, but similar considerations apply in favour of the selective CEV (as I attempted to show in my essay).
I’ve retracted that comment. I suppose that the careful use of probabilistic terms is important in general.