If that’s what Eliezer means, then this looks like standard practical rationality theory. You have reasons to act (preferences) so as to maximize your utility function (except that it may not be right to call it a “utility function” because there’s no guarantee that each person’s preference set is logically consistent). The fact that you want other people to satisfy their preferences, too, means that if enough other people want world-state X, your utility function will assign higher utility to world-state X than to world-state Y even if world-state Y has more utility in your utility function when not counting the utility in your utility function assigned to the utility functions of other people.
But I don’t think that’s all of what Eliezer is saying because, for example, he keeps talking about the significance of a test showing that you would be okay being hit with an alien ray gun that changed your ice cream preference from chocolate to vanilla, but you wouldn’t be okay being hit with an alien ray gun that changed your preferences from not-wanting-to-rape-people to wanting-to-rape-people.
He also writes about the importance of a process of reflective equilibrium, though I’m not sure to what end.
Or at least how to balance between them. Though there might be more to it than that.
edit: more precisely (in EY’s terms), to figure out how to balance the various demands of morality which, as it happens, is included in your terminal values.
...an alien ray gun that changed your ice cream preference from chocolate to vanilla, but you wouldn’t be okay being hit with an alien ray gun that changed your preferences from not-wanting-to-rape-people to wanting-to-rape-people.
I’m completely lost about that. I don’t see how vanilla preferences differ from rape preferences. We just happen to weigh them differently. But that is solely a fact about our evolutionary history.
Vanilla preferences are instrumental. I prefer chocolate because of the pleasure I get from eating it. If the alien ray made me want to eat vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate ice cream while still enjoy chocolate ice cream more, I would prefer not be hit by it.
All I’m talking about is how I compute my utility function. I’m not postulating that my way of assigning utility lines up with any absolute facts, so I don’t see how the fact that our brains were evolved is relevant.
Is there a specific part of my post that you don’t understand or that you disagree with?
I think that there may be a failure-to-communicate going on because I play Rationalist’s Taboo with words like ‘should’ and ‘right’ when I’m not talking about something technical. In my mind, these words assert the existence of an objective morality, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable using them unless everyone’s utility functions converged to the same morality—this seems really really unlikely so far.
So, instead I talk about world-states that my utility function assigns utility to. What I think that Eliezer’s trying to get at in No License To Be Human is that you shouldn’t (for the sake of not creating rendering your stated utility function inconsistent with your emotions) be a moral relativist, and that you should pursue your utility function instead of wireheading your brain to make it feel like you’re creating utility.
I think that I’ve interpreted this correctly, but I’d appreciate Eliezer telling me whether I have or not.
Hm. I can say truthfully that I don’t care whether I like vanilla or chocolate ice cream more. I suppose that the statement of my utility with regard to eating vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream would be ‘I assign higher utility to eating the flavor of ice cream which tastes better to me.’ That is, I only care about a state of my mind. So, if the circumstances changed so I could procure that state of mind by other means (ex: eating vanilla instead of chocolate ice cream), I would have no problem with that. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun does not give me any less utility after being hit by the alien ray gun than the action that I take now gives me in the present. So I don’t care whether I get hit by the ray gun.
But my statement of utility with regard to people being raped would be “I assign much lower utility to someone being raped them not being raped.” Here, I care about a state of the world outside of my mind. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun (rape) has less utility under my current utility function than (~rape), so my current utility function would assign negative utility to being hit by the ray gun.
This much makes sense to me.
I don’t know what ‘reflective equilibrium’ means; this may be because I didn’t really make it through the metaethics sequence. After I formulated what I’ve said in this comment and the above one, I wasn’t getting much out of it.
Edit: Inserted some italics for the main difference between the two scenarios and removed a set of italics. No content changes.
Dorikka,
If that’s what Eliezer means, then this looks like standard practical rationality theory. You have reasons to act (preferences) so as to maximize your utility function (except that it may not be right to call it a “utility function” because there’s no guarantee that each person’s preference set is logically consistent). The fact that you want other people to satisfy their preferences, too, means that if enough other people want world-state X, your utility function will assign higher utility to world-state X than to world-state Y even if world-state Y has more utility in your utility function when not counting the utility in your utility function assigned to the utility functions of other people.
But I don’t think that’s all of what Eliezer is saying because, for example, he keeps talking about the significance of a test showing that you would be okay being hit with an alien ray gun that changed your ice cream preference from chocolate to vanilla, but you wouldn’t be okay being hit with an alien ray gun that changed your preferences from not-wanting-to-rape-people to wanting-to-rape-people.
He also writes about the importance of a process of reflective equilibrium, though I’m not sure to what end.
To handle value uncertainty. If you don’t know your terminal values, you have to discover them somehow.
Is that it? Eliezer employs reflective equilibrium as an epistemological method for figuring out what your terminal values are?
As I understand it, yes.
Or at least how to balance between them. Though there might be more to it than that.
edit: more precisely (in EY’s terms), to figure out how to balance the various demands of morality which, as it happens, is included in your terminal values.
I’m completely lost about that. I don’t see how vanilla preferences differ from rape preferences. We just happen to weigh them differently. But that is solely a fact about our evolutionary history.
Vanilla preferences are instrumental. I prefer chocolate because of the pleasure I get from eating it. If the alien ray made me want to eat vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate ice cream while still enjoy chocolate ice cream more, I would prefer not be hit by it.
All I’m talking about is how I compute my utility function. I’m not postulating that my way of assigning utility lines up with any absolute facts, so I don’t see how the fact that our brains were evolved is relevant.
Is there a specific part of my post that you don’t understand or that you disagree with?
I agree with you, I disagree with Yudkowksy (or don’t understand him). By what you wrote you seem to disagree with him as well.
Could you link me to the post of Eliezer’s that you disagree with on this? I’d like to see it.
This comment, as I wrote here. I don’t understand this post.
I think that there may be a failure-to-communicate going on because I play Rationalist’s Taboo with words like ‘should’ and ‘right’ when I’m not talking about something technical. In my mind, these words assert the existence of an objective morality, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable using them unless everyone’s utility functions converged to the same morality—this seems really really unlikely so far.
So, instead I talk about world-states that my utility function assigns utility to. What I think that Eliezer’s trying to get at in No License To Be Human is that you shouldn’t (for the sake of not creating rendering your stated utility function inconsistent with your emotions) be a moral relativist, and that you should pursue your utility function instead of wireheading your brain to make it feel like you’re creating utility.
I think that I’ve interpreted this correctly, but I’d appreciate Eliezer telling me whether I have or not.
Hm. I can say truthfully that I don’t care whether I like vanilla or chocolate ice cream more. I suppose that the statement of my utility with regard to eating vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream would be ‘I assign higher utility to eating the flavor of ice cream which tastes better to me.’ That is, I only care about a state of my mind. So, if the circumstances changed so I could procure that state of mind by other means (ex: eating vanilla instead of chocolate ice cream), I would have no problem with that. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun does not give me any less utility after being hit by the alien ray gun than the action that I take now gives me in the present. So I don’t care whether I get hit by the ray gun.
But my statement of utility with regard to people being raped would be “I assign much lower utility to someone being raped them not being raped.” Here, I care about a state of the world outside of my mind. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun (rape) has less utility under my current utility function than (~rape), so my current utility function would assign negative utility to being hit by the ray gun.
This much makes sense to me.
I don’t know what ‘reflective equilibrium’ means; this may be because I didn’t really make it through the metaethics sequence. After I formulated what I’ve said in this comment and the above one, I wasn’t getting much out of it.
Edit: Inserted some italics for the main difference between the two scenarios and removed a set of italics. No content changes.