Eliezer: So if you say that I’m revealing insufficient virtue by walking this path instead of the path of a firefighter
I did not say that, nor did I intend that. Your post was about the etiology of your altruistic attitude, and I said it seemed to be hard-wired self-preservation.
@Eliezer:
None of the scenarios in Superhero Bias involve the hero saving his own life by saving the lives of the others. They instead involve the hero putting himself at risk for them. I don’t see the analogy with FAI.
To what degree is this amenability to help others actually hard-wired self-preservation? I mean, if you (Eliezer) hold that superhuman AI inevitably is coming, and that most forms of it will destroy mankind, isn’t the desire to save others from that fate the same as the desire to save yourself? Rewrite the scenario such that you save mankind with FAI but die in the process. That sounds more like altruism.
Main post: Everything I am, is surely my brain.
It would seem that, as far as causes go, everything about any of us is contained in the zygote, long preceding any sort of “brain”. Indeed, it would seem to go far more basic than that, as discussed in the Quantum Mechanics series. These recent discussions about ethics, morality, concept of self, etc. seem to be effects, rather than causes, the results of external forces interacting with the original selection and sequence of a relative few chemicals. Who can say that the eventual outcome and expression of a chemical code is analogous to, or necessary for, that of a mechanical code? None of this seems very reductionist to me, and most of the discussion could not possibly qualify as “science”.
I came across this post only today, because of the current comment in the “recent comments” column. Clearly, it was an exercise that drew an unusual amount of response. It further reinforces
my impression of much of the OB blog, posted in August, and denied by email.
@”Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive,” said Shakespeare.
Hopefully, the FAI will know that the author was Sir Walter Scott.
Supporting Ben Goertzel’s comment:
Michael Shermer revised his book, Why People Believe Weird Things, to contain a chapter called âWhy Smart People Believe Weird Thingsâ. In it, he quotes studies by Hudson, Getzels, and Jackson showing that âcreativity and intelligence are relatively orthogonal (i.e., unrelated statistically) at high levels of intelligence. Intuitively, it seems like the more intelligent people are the more creative they will be. In fact, in almost any profession significantly affected by intelligence, once you are at a certain level among the population of practitioners (and that level appears to be an IQ score of about 125), there is no difference in intelligence between the most successful and the average in that profession. At that point other variables, independent of intelligence, take over, such as creativity, or achievement motivation and the drive to succeed.â
Aleksei:
Indeed, I did misunderstand that! No wonder I was so impressed that the actor’s refined position in the debate. My gullibility is showing. However, the underlying reason for the question was the many, many references to SF over the past posts and comments, and I think I have a better understanding now. Vassar, I think, put it best for me.
@MV: Thanks, Michael.
@scott clark: George Lucas wasn’t trying to teach anything more important than that Luke was a whiny brat, who was reckless, implusive, and lazy. That’s the point of my question, scott. Why is George Lucas (or the other authors whose novels he adapted in the series) to be considered an appropriate (valuable?) teacher/observer?
Not having grown up on science fiction, but being an avid reader of this blog: what is it with the reverence shown to science fiction stories and movies among OB’s readers? From whence does the authority to give insight on important ideas emanate? I understand that many readers were motivated toward their current important interests by early exposure to SF. I also realize that some of the authors were/are scientists in their own right, but are they on the level of those scientific greats who are quoted (and frequently dispatched) here regularly? If so, why do not we see more quotes from the authors themselves, instead of from their characters and their story-lines? If these authors have such important insights, why is there not more discussion about the origins of those insights, how and why these authors have such utility in the field of important truths, such as occurs when the blog reviews EY’s stories and their relationships to his actual work? I know I’m far older than most readers (or at least the commenters); is this a generational thing? It seems so out of line with the intense rationality of the group otherwise. Is it just enetertainment (I’m all for that), or what am I missing?
In medicine, the concept “zebra” represents a strange, unlikely condition or diagnosis, usually to be avoided or considered on a lower tier, iterated thus: When one hears hoofbeats, one should think of horses rather than zebras. Spending too much time chasing zebras detracts from making the diagnosis of “horse”. Coincidence? Or just another example of the medical field’s poor thought process?
@Dynamically Linked: Eliezer did reevaluate, and this blog is his human enhancement project!
I suggested a similar opinion of the blog’s role here 6 weeks ago, but EY subsequently denied it. Time will tell.
Does the unusual tenor of this post have anything to do with the upcoming Singularity Summit and its potential for fund-raising?
@EY: We are the cards we are dealt, and intelligence is the unfairest of all those cards. More unfair than wealth or health or home country, unfairer than your happiness set-point. People have difficulty accepting that life can be that unfair, it’s not a happy thought. “Intelligence isn’t as important as X” is one way of turning away from the unfairness, refusing to deal with it, thinking a happier thought instead. It’s a temptation, both to those dealt poor cards, and to those dealt good ones. Just as downplaying the importance of money is a temptation both to the poor and to the rich.
How could the writer of the above words be the writer of today’s post? Apparently (as I’m told) you knew from the days of the Northwestern Talent Search that you weren’t the smartest of those tested (not to mention all those who were not tested), but certainly one of the smartest. Apparently, you were dealt a straight flush to the king, while some in history received a royal flush. What difference does it make whether someone thinks you are the smartest person they have known, unless you are the smartest person? Does a straight flush to the king meet the threshold required to develop a method for “saving humanity”? If not, why aren’t you in the camp of those who wish to improve human intelligence? awaits clap of thunder from those dealt better hands
Bertrand Russell felt that such thought processes are native to humans:
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires—desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Perhaps any reasoning one readily accepts is evidence of bias, and bears deeper examination. Could this be the value of educated criticism, the willingness of others to “give it to me straight”, the impetus to fight against the unconscious tendencies of intelligence?
@Carl Shulman:
Thanks Carl. Now I understand. See Teacher’s Password.
Thank you, Carl Shulman, for correcting my misinformation. It’s difficult for one to know which references are reliable, when one is not in the field.
@Carl Shulman: The largest hypothesized effects of the disease alleles would be only a small fraction of the Ashkenazim advantage: they just aren’t frequent enough.
Dr. Bostrom cites this paper (so I considered it might be reliable) in his treatise on cognitive enhancement: “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence” by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, Henry Harpending. Speaking of the incidence of of the Ashkenazim mutations, they state: “the probability of having at least one allele from these disorders is 59%.”. As I understand it, these disorders are exceedingly rare in non-Ashkenazim. Are these authors simply incorrect, or did you mean that a 59% incidence just isn’t frequent enough? That incidence is very close to the intelligence distribution I read between mutated and non-mutated Ashkenazim. Coincidence? Or already discredited?
… if everyone was given the ability of todays top 2% regarding IQ. What would happen, implications, economic output, happiness and so on.
This doesn’t seem outlandish. In my former field, advances in gene therapy have been able (in animal models) to improve the function of tissues. Observations such as: the association of autosomal recessive and low-penetrance dominant mutations in Ashkenazim with high intelligence. Without at least heterozygosity for the health disorders associated with the mutations, Ashkenazim are no more intelligent, in the aggregate, than non-Ashkenazy Jews. See here and here. It seems reasonable that the genetic pattern of this disease/intelligence relationship will be known, the ethical concerns addressed, and a method for cognitive enhancement available to all, perhaps sooner rather than later. So much the better if it were to be effective in adults! Please correct me if I have misunderstood this concept.
“I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs.” —Jonathan I. Katz
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. —Ernest Hemingway
Isn’t there already a good deal of experience regarding the attitudes/actions of the most intelligent entity known (in current times, humans) towards cryonically suspended potential sentient beings (frozen embryos)?