Congrats on the accomplishments. Leaving aside the rest, I like the prompt: why don’t people wirehead? Realistically, they’re cautious due to having but one brain and a low visibility into what they’d become. A digital-copyable agent would, if curious about what slightly different versions of themselves would do, not hesitate to simulate one in a controlled environment.
Generally I would tweak my brain if it would reliably give me the kind of actions I’d now approve of, while providing at worst the same sort of subjective state as I’d have if managing the same results without the intervention. I wouldn’t care if the center of my actions was different as long as the things I value today were bettered.
Anyway, it’s a nice template for generating ideas for: when would an agent want to allow its values to shift?
I’m glad you broke free of trying to equal others’ bragged-about abilities. Not everyone needs to be great at everything. People who invest in learning something generally talk up the benefits of what they paid for. I’m thinking of Heinlein’s famous “specialization is for insects” where I presume much of the laundry lists of things every person should know how to do are exactly the arbtirary things he knows how to do.
I like your comment and think it’s insightful about why/when to wirehead or not
Nitpick about your endorsed skills point: Not always do people have high overlap in what they know and what they wish they knew or endorse others knowing. I’ve had a lifelong obsession with learning, especially with acquiring skills. Unfortunately, my next-thing-to-learn selection is very unguided. It has thus been thematic struggle in my life to keep focused on learning the things I judge to objectively be valuable. I have a huge list of skills/hobbies I think are mostly or entirely impractical or useless (e.g. artistic woodworking, paleontology). And also lots of things I’ve been thinking for years that I ought to learn better (e.g. linear algebra). I’ve been wishing for years that I had a better way to reward myself for studying things I reflectively endorse knowing, rather than wasting time/energy studying unendorsed things.
In other words, I’d love a method (like Max Harms’ fictional Zen Helmets) to better align my system 1 motivations to my system 2 motivations. The hard part is figuring out how to implement this change without corrupting the system 2 values or its value-discovery-and-updating processes.
Generally I would tweak my brain if it would reliably give me the kind of actions I’d now approve of, while providing at worst the same sort of subjective state as I’d have if managing the same results without the intervention. I wouldn’t care if the center of my actions was different as long as the things I value today were bettered.
Technically, we do this all the time. Reading stuff online, talking to people, we absorb their models of the world, their values and solutions to problems we face.
Hence the Schwartznegger poster on the wall makes you strong, the countryside folks make you peaceful, and friend reminding you “you’re being a jerk right now” makes you calm down
Congrats on the accomplishments. Leaving aside the rest, I like the prompt: why don’t people wirehead? Realistically, they’re cautious due to having but one brain and a low visibility into what they’d become. A digital-copyable agent would, if curious about what slightly different versions of themselves would do, not hesitate to simulate one in a controlled environment.
Generally I would tweak my brain if it would reliably give me the kind of actions I’d now approve of, while providing at worst the same sort of subjective state as I’d have if managing the same results without the intervention. I wouldn’t care if the center of my actions was different as long as the things I value today were bettered.
Anyway, it’s a nice template for generating ideas for: when would an agent want to allow its values to shift?
I’m glad you broke free of trying to equal others’ bragged-about abilities. Not everyone needs to be great at everything. People who invest in learning something generally talk up the benefits of what they paid for. I’m thinking of Heinlein’s famous “specialization is for insects” where I presume much of the laundry lists of things every person should know how to do are exactly the arbtirary things he knows how to do.
I like your comment and think it’s insightful about why/when to wirehead or not
Nitpick about your endorsed skills point: Not always do people have high overlap in what they know and what they wish they knew or endorse others knowing. I’ve had a lifelong obsession with learning, especially with acquiring skills. Unfortunately, my next-thing-to-learn selection is very unguided. It has thus been thematic struggle in my life to keep focused on learning the things I judge to objectively be valuable. I have a huge list of skills/hobbies I think are mostly or entirely impractical or useless (e.g. artistic woodworking, paleontology). And also lots of things I’ve been thinking for years that I ought to learn better (e.g. linear algebra). I’ve been wishing for years that I had a better way to reward myself for studying things I reflectively endorse knowing, rather than wasting time/energy studying unendorsed things. In other words, I’d love a method (like Max Harms’ fictional Zen Helmets) to better align my system 1 motivations to my system 2 motivations. The hard part is figuring out how to implement this change without corrupting the system 2 values or its value-discovery-and-updating processes.
Technically, we do this all the time. Reading stuff online, talking to people, we absorb their models of the world, their values and solutions to problems we face.
Hence the Schwartznegger poster on the wall makes you strong, the countryside folks make you peaceful, and friend reminding you “you’re being a jerk right now” makes you calm down