I am in essential agreement with MBlume. It is more likely than not that the space-time continuum we find ourselves in will support life and intelligence for only a finite length of time. But even if that is the case, there might be another compartment of reality beyond our space-time continuum that can support life or intelligence indefinitely. If I affect that other compartment (even if I merely influence someone who influences someone who communicates with the other compartment) then my struggling comes to more than nothing.
If on the other hand, there really is no way for me or my friends to have a permanent effect on reality, then I have no preference for what happens.
If on the other hand, there really is no way for me or my friends to have a permanent effect on reality, then I have no preference for what happens.
People use the word “preference” to mean many things, including:
Felt emotional preference;
Descriptive model of the the preferences an outside observer could use to predict one’s actual behavior;
Intellectual framework that has an xml tag “preference”, that accords with some other xml tag “the right thing to do”, and perhaps with what one verbally advocates;
Intellectual framework that a particular verbal portion of oneself, in practice, tries to manipulate the rest of oneself into better following.
I take it you mean “preference” in senses 3 and 4, but not in sense 1 or 2?
Anna, you are incorrect in guessing that my statement of preference is less than extremely useful for an outside observer to predict my actual behavior.
In other words, the part of me that is loyal to the intellectual framework is very good at getting the rest of me to serve the framework.
The rest of this comment consists of more than most readers probably want to know about my unusual way of valuing things.
I am indifferent to impermanent effects. Internal experiences, mine and yours, certainly qualify as impermanent effects. Note though that internal experiences correlate with things I assign high instrumental value to.
OK, so I care only about permanent effects. I still have not said which permanent effects I prefer. Well, I value the ability to predict and control reality. Whose ability to predict and control? I am indifferent about that: what I want to maximize is reality’s ability to predict and control reality: if maximizing my own ability is the best way to achieve that, then that is what I do. If maximizing my friend’s ability or my hostile annoying neighbor’s ability is the best way, then I do that. When do I want it? Well, my discount rate is zero.
That is the most informative 130 words I can write for improving the ability of someone who does not know me to predict the global effects of my actual behavior.
Since I am in a tiny, tiny minority in wanting this, I might choose to ally myself with people with significantly different preferences. And it is probably impossible in the long term to be allies or colleagues or coworkers with a group of people who all roughly share the same preferences without in a real sense adopting those preferences as my own.
But the preferences I just outlined are the criteria I’d use to decide who to ally with. The single criterion that is most informative in predicting who I might ally with BTW is the prospective ally’s intrinsic values’ discount rate’s being low.
I understand that your stated goal system has effects on your external behavior.
Still, I was trying to understand your claim that “If… there really is no way for me or my friends to have a permanent effect on reality, then I have no preference for what happens” (emphasis mine). Imagine that you were somehow shown a magically 100% sound, 100% persuasive proof that you could not have any permanent effect on reality, and that the entire multiverse would eventually end. In this circumstance, I doubt very much that the concept “Hollerith’s aims” would cease to be predictively useful. Whether you ate breakfast, or sought to end your life, or took up a new trade, or whatever, I suspect that your actions would have a purposive structure unlike the random bouncing about of inanimate systems. If you maintain that you would have no “preferences” under these circumstances (despite a model of “Hollerith’s preferences” being useful to predict your behavior under these circumstances), this suggests you’re using the term “preferences” in an interesting way.
The reason I’m trying to pursue this line of inquiry is that I am not clear what “preference” does and should mean, as any of us discuss ethics and meta-ethics. No doubt you feel some desire to realize goals that are valued by goal system zero, and no doubt you act partially on that desire as well. No doubt you also feel and act partially on other desires or preferences that a particular aspect of you does not endorse. The thing I’m confused about is… well, I don’t know how to say what I’m confused about; I’m confused. But something like:
What goes on, in practice, when a person verbally endorses certain sense (1) and sense (2) preferences and disclaims other sense (1) or sense (2) preferences? What kind of a sense (4) system for manipulating oneself then gets formed -- is it distinguished from other cognitive subsystems by more than the xml tag? What kind of actual psychological consequences does the xml tag “Hollerith’s/Anna’s/whoever’s ‘real preferences’” tend to have?
Which part is Hollerith? Where, in practice, does your desire to realize the goals of goal system zero reside? What kind of a cognitive subsystem, I mean—what are the details?
I would rather have longer to think before making high-stakes decisions. If I could, I would rather defer various high-stakes decisions to “what I would want, if I knew more and had time to think it through”. But what kind of more reflective “me” am I (“I”?) trying to defer to, here? What kinds of volition-extrapolation fulfill what kinds of my (or others’) existing preferences? What kinds of volition-extrapolation would fulfill my existing preferences, if the “me” whose existing preferences I was trying to fulfill had time to think more, first?
My confusion is not specific to you, and maybe I shouldn’t have responded to you with it. But your example is particularly interesting in that the preferences you verbally endorse are particularly far from the ordinary, felt, behaviorally enacted preferences that we mostly start out with as humans. And given that distance, it is natural to ask, “Why, and in what sense, should we call these preferences ‘Hollerith’s preferences’/ ‘Hollerith’s ethics’/ ‘the right thing to do’ ”? Psychologically, is “right” just functioning as a floating xml tag of apparent justified-ness?
Imagine that you were somehow shown a magically 100% sound, 100% persuasive proof that you could not have permanent effect on reality, and that the entire multiverse would eventually end.
I agree with you, Anna, that in that case the concept of my aims does not cease to be predictively useful. (Consequently, I take back my “then I have no preferences” .) It is just that I have not devoted any serious brain time to what my aims might be if knew for sure I cannot have a permanent effect. (Nor does it bother me that I am bad at predicting what I might do if I knew for sure I cannot have a permanent effect.)
Most of the people who say they are loyal to goal system zero seem to have only a superficial commitment to goal system zero. In contrast, Garcia clearly had a very strong deep commitment to goal system zero. Another way of saying what I said above: like Garcia’s, my commitment to goal system zero is strong and deep. But that is probably not helping you.
One of the ways I have approached CEV is to think of the superintelligence as implementing what would have happened if the superintelligence had not come into being—with certain modifications. An example of a modification you and I will agree is desirable: if Joe suffers brain damage the day before the superintelligence comes into being, the superintelligence arranges things the way that Joe would have arranged them if he had not suffered the brain damage. The intelligence might learn that by e.g. reading what Joe posted on the internet before his injury. In summary, one line of investigation that seems worthwhile to me is to get away from this slippery concept of preference or volition and think instead of what the superintelligence predicts would have happened if the superintelligence does not act. Note that e.g. the human sense of right and wrong are predicted by any competent agent to have huge effects on what will happen.
My adoption of goal system zero in 1992 helped me to resolve an emotional problem of mine. I severely doubt it would help your professional goals and concerns for me to describe that, though.
Would you go into why you only care about permanent effects? It seems highly bizarre to me (especially since, as Eliezer has pointed out, everything that happens is permanent insofar as occupies volume in 4d spacetime).
A system of valuing things is a definition. I have defined a system and said, “Oh, by the way, this system has my loyalty.”
It is possible that the system is ill-defined, that is, that my definition contradicts itself, does not apply to the reality we find ourselves in, or differs in some significant way from what I think it means. But your appeal to general relativity does not show the ill-definedness of my system because it is possible to pick the time dimension out of spacetime: the time dimension it is treated quite specially in general relativity.
Eliezer’s response to my definition appeals not to general relativity but rather to Julian Barbour’s endless physics and Eliezer’s refinements and additions to it, but his response does not establish the ill-definedness of my system any more than your argument does. If anyone wants the URLs of Eliezer’s comments (on Overcoming Bias) that respond to my definition, write me and say a few words about why it is important to you that I make this minor effort.
If Eliezer has a non-flimsy argument that my definition contradicts itself, does not apply to the reality we find ourselves in, or differs significantly from what I think it means, he has not shared it with me.
When I am being careful, I use Judea Pearl’s language of causality in my definition rather than the concept of time. The reason I used the concept of time in yesterday’s description is succinctness: “I am indifferent to impermanent effects” is shorter than “I care only about terminal effects where a terminal effect is defined as an effect that is not itself a cause” plus sufficient explanation of Judea Pearl’s framework to avoid the most common ways in which those words would be misunderstood.
So if I had to, I could use Judea Pearl’s language of causality to remove the reliance of my definition on the concept of time. But again, nothing you or Eliezer has written requires me to retreat from my use of the concept of time.
So there is my response to the parts of your comment that can be interpreted as implying that my system is ill-defined.
But what you were probably after when you asked, “Would you go into why you only care about permanent effects?” is why I am loyal to this system I have defined—or more to the point why you should give it any of your loyalty. Well, I used try to persuade people to become loyal to the system, but that had negative effects, including the effect of causing me to tend to hijack conversations on Overcoming Bias, so now I try only to explain and inform. I no longer try to promote or persuade.
My main advice to you, dclayh, is to chalk this up to the fact that the internet gives a voice to people whose values are very different from yours. For example, you will probably find the values implied by the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement or by anti-natalism just as unconventional as my values. Peace, dclayh.
I wasn’t trying to claim that your stated goal system had no effect on your observable behavior, only that it doesn’t have a complete effect. That is, that I would be very surprised if, after you were shown a magically completely certain proof that it is impossible for you to have permanent effect on reality, concepts like “Hollerith’s goals” completely ceased to be useful in predicting, say, whether you would eat breakfast.
Ming’s minions burst in and abduct you to the planet Ming. “So!” smiles Ming the Merciless in his merciless way, “My astronomers and physicists, who have had thousands of years to improve their sciences beyond your primitive level, assure me that all this will pass, yes, even I myself! One day it will be as if none had ever lived! Just rocks and dead stars, and insufficient complexity to ever again assemble creatures such as us, though it last a Graham number of years!”
“Tell me, knowing this—and I am as known for my honesty as for my evil, for see! I have not executed my scientists for telling me an unwelcome truth—are you truly indifferent as to whether I let you go, or hand you over to my torturers? Does this touch of the branding iron mean nothing?”
I feel like pointing out that Graham’s number is big enough that if the universe lasted that long, it would effectively visit every state it possibly can, unless the universe is fucking huge.
I am not completely indifferent to being tortured, so in your hypothetical, Kennaway, I will try to get Ming to let me go because in your hypothetical I know I cannot have a permanent effect on reality.
But when faced with a choice between having a positive permanent effect on reality and avoiding being tortured I’ll always choose having the permanent effect if I can.
Almost everybody gives in under torture. Almost everyone will eventually tell an interrogator skilled in torture everything they know, e.g., the passphrase to the rebel mainframe. Since I have no reason to believe I am any different in that regard, there are limits to my ability to choose the way I said. But for most practical purposes, I can and will choose the way I said. In particular, I think I can calmly choose being tortured over losing my ability to have a permanent effect on reality: it is just that once the torture actually starts, I will probably lose my resolve.
I am worried, Kennaway, that our conversation about my way of valuing things will distract you from what I wrote below about the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder from a surgical procedure. Your scenario is less than ideal for exploring what intrinsic value people assign to internal experience: it is better to present people with a choice of being killed painlessly and being killed after 24 hours of intense pain and then asking what benefit to their best friend or to humanity would induce them to choose the intense pain.
To the best of our knowledge, the universe will run down one day, and all our struggling will come to nothing.
A meta-ethics which says “nothing temporary can matter” means all utilities come to zero in such a universe.
I am in essential agreement with MBlume. It is more likely than not that the space-time continuum we find ourselves in will support life and intelligence for only a finite length of time. But even if that is the case, there might be another compartment of reality beyond our space-time continuum that can support life or intelligence indefinitely. If I affect that other compartment (even if I merely influence someone who influences someone who communicates with the other compartment) then my struggling comes to more than nothing.
If on the other hand, there really is no way for me or my friends to have a permanent effect on reality, then I have no preference for what happens.
People use the word “preference” to mean many things, including:
Felt emotional preference;
Descriptive model of the the preferences an outside observer could use to predict one’s actual behavior;
Intellectual framework that has an xml tag “preference”, that accords with some other xml tag “the right thing to do”, and perhaps with what one verbally advocates;
Intellectual framework that a particular verbal portion of oneself, in practice, tries to manipulate the rest of oneself into better following.
I take it you mean “preference” in senses 3 and 4, but not in sense 1 or 2?
Anna, you are incorrect in guessing that my statement of preference is less than extremely useful for an outside observer to predict my actual behavior.
In other words, the part of me that is loyal to the intellectual framework is very good at getting the rest of me to serve the framework.
The rest of this comment consists of more than most readers probably want to know about my unusual way of valuing things.
I am indifferent to impermanent effects. Internal experiences, mine and yours, certainly qualify as impermanent effects. Note though that internal experiences correlate with things I assign high instrumental value to.
OK, so I care only about permanent effects. I still have not said which permanent effects I prefer. Well, I value the ability to predict and control reality. Whose ability to predict and control? I am indifferent about that: what I want to maximize is reality’s ability to predict and control reality: if maximizing my own ability is the best way to achieve that, then that is what I do. If maximizing my friend’s ability or my hostile annoying neighbor’s ability is the best way, then I do that. When do I want it? Well, my discount rate is zero.
That is the most informative 130 words I can write for improving the ability of someone who does not know me to predict the global effects of my actual behavior.
Since I am in a tiny, tiny minority in wanting this, I might choose to ally myself with people with significantly different preferences. And it is probably impossible in the long term to be allies or colleagues or coworkers with a group of people who all roughly share the same preferences without in a real sense adopting those preferences as my own.
But the preferences I just outlined are the criteria I’d use to decide who to ally with. The single criterion that is most informative in predicting who I might ally with BTW is the prospective ally’s intrinsic values’ discount rate’s being low.
I understand that your stated goal system has effects on your external behavior.
Still, I was trying to understand your claim that “If… there really is no way for me or my friends to have a permanent effect on reality, then I have no preference for what happens” (emphasis mine). Imagine that you were somehow shown a magically 100% sound, 100% persuasive proof that you could not have any permanent effect on reality, and that the entire multiverse would eventually end. In this circumstance, I doubt very much that the concept “Hollerith’s aims” would cease to be predictively useful. Whether you ate breakfast, or sought to end your life, or took up a new trade, or whatever, I suspect that your actions would have a purposive structure unlike the random bouncing about of inanimate systems. If you maintain that you would have no “preferences” under these circumstances (despite a model of “Hollerith’s preferences” being useful to predict your behavior under these circumstances), this suggests you’re using the term “preferences” in an interesting way.
The reason I’m trying to pursue this line of inquiry is that I am not clear what “preference” does and should mean, as any of us discuss ethics and meta-ethics. No doubt you feel some desire to realize goals that are valued by goal system zero, and no doubt you act partially on that desire as well. No doubt you also feel and act partially on other desires or preferences that a particular aspect of you does not endorse. The thing I’m confused about is… well, I don’t know how to say what I’m confused about; I’m confused. But something like:
What goes on, in practice, when a person verbally endorses certain sense (1) and sense (2) preferences and disclaims other sense (1) or sense (2) preferences? What kind of a sense (4) system for manipulating oneself then gets formed -- is it distinguished from other cognitive subsystems by more than the xml tag? What kind of actual psychological consequences does the xml tag “Hollerith’s/Anna’s/whoever’s ‘real preferences’” tend to have?
Which parts am I?
Which part is Hollerith? Where, in practice, does your desire to realize the goals of goal system zero reside? What kind of a cognitive subsystem, I mean—what are the details?
I would rather have longer to think before making high-stakes decisions. If I could, I would rather defer various high-stakes decisions to “what I would want, if I knew more and had time to think it through”. But what kind of more reflective “me” am I (“I”?) trying to defer to, here? What kinds of volition-extrapolation fulfill what kinds of my (or others’) existing preferences? What kinds of volition-extrapolation would fulfill my existing preferences, if the “me” whose existing preferences I was trying to fulfill had time to think more, first?
My confusion is not specific to you, and maybe I shouldn’t have responded to you with it. But your example is particularly interesting in that the preferences you verbally endorse are particularly far from the ordinary, felt, behaviorally enacted preferences that we mostly start out with as humans. And given that distance, it is natural to ask, “Why, and in what sense, should we call these preferences ‘Hollerith’s preferences’/ ‘Hollerith’s ethics’/ ‘the right thing to do’ ”? Psychologically, is “right” just functioning as a floating xml tag of apparent justified-ness?
I agree with you, Anna, that in that case the concept of my aims does not cease to be predictively useful. (Consequently, I take back my “then I have no preferences” .) It is just that I have not devoted any serious brain time to what my aims might be if knew for sure I cannot have a permanent effect. (Nor does it bother me that I am bad at predicting what I might do if I knew for sure I cannot have a permanent effect.)
Most of the people who say they are loyal to goal system zero seem to have only a superficial commitment to goal system zero. In contrast, Garcia clearly had a very strong deep commitment to goal system zero. Another way of saying what I said above: like Garcia’s, my commitment to goal system zero is strong and deep. But that is probably not helping you.
One of the ways I have approached CEV is to think of the superintelligence as implementing what would have happened if the superintelligence had not come into being—with certain modifications. An example of a modification you and I will agree is desirable: if Joe suffers brain damage the day before the superintelligence comes into being, the superintelligence arranges things the way that Joe would have arranged them if he had not suffered the brain damage. The intelligence might learn that by e.g. reading what Joe posted on the internet before his injury. In summary, one line of investigation that seems worthwhile to me is to get away from this slippery concept of preference or volition and think instead of what the superintelligence predicts would have happened if the superintelligence does not act. Note that e.g. the human sense of right and wrong are predicted by any competent agent to have huge effects on what will happen.
My adoption of goal system zero in 1992 helped me to resolve an emotional problem of mine. I severely doubt it would help your professional goals and concerns for me to describe that, though.
Would you go into why you only care about permanent effects? It seems highly bizarre to me (especially since, as Eliezer has pointed out, everything that happens is permanent insofar as occupies volume in 4d spacetime).
A system of valuing things is a definition. I have defined a system and said, “Oh, by the way, this system has my loyalty.”
It is possible that the system is ill-defined, that is, that my definition contradicts itself, does not apply to the reality we find ourselves in, or differs in some significant way from what I think it means. But your appeal to general relativity does not show the ill-definedness of my system because it is possible to pick the time dimension out of spacetime: the time dimension it is treated quite specially in general relativity.
Eliezer’s response to my definition appeals not to general relativity but rather to Julian Barbour’s endless physics and Eliezer’s refinements and additions to it, but his response does not establish the ill-definedness of my system any more than your argument does. If anyone wants the URLs of Eliezer’s comments (on Overcoming Bias) that respond to my definition, write me and say a few words about why it is important to you that I make this minor effort.
If Eliezer has a non-flimsy argument that my definition contradicts itself, does not apply to the reality we find ourselves in, or differs significantly from what I think it means, he has not shared it with me.
When I am being careful, I use Judea Pearl’s language of causality in my definition rather than the concept of time. The reason I used the concept of time in yesterday’s description is succinctness: “I am indifferent to impermanent effects” is shorter than “I care only about terminal effects where a terminal effect is defined as an effect that is not itself a cause” plus sufficient explanation of Judea Pearl’s framework to avoid the most common ways in which those words would be misunderstood.
So if I had to, I could use Judea Pearl’s language of causality to remove the reliance of my definition on the concept of time. But again, nothing you or Eliezer has written requires me to retreat from my use of the concept of time.
So there is my response to the parts of your comment that can be interpreted as implying that my system is ill-defined.
But what you were probably after when you asked, “Would you go into why you only care about permanent effects?” is why I am loyal to this system I have defined—or more to the point why you should give it any of your loyalty. Well, I used try to persuade people to become loyal to the system, but that had negative effects, including the effect of causing me to tend to hijack conversations on Overcoming Bias, so now I try only to explain and inform. I no longer try to promote or persuade.
My main advice to you, dclayh, is to chalk this up to the fact that the internet gives a voice to people whose values are very different from yours. For example, you will probably find the values implied by the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement or by anti-natalism just as unconventional as my values. Peace, dclayh.
I wasn’t trying to claim that your stated goal system had no effect on your observable behavior, only that it doesn’t have a complete effect. That is, that I would be very surprised if, after you were shown a magically completely certain proof that it is impossible for you to have permanent effect on reality, concepts like “Hollerith’s goals” completely ceased to be useful in predicting, say, whether you would eat breakfast.
*jangling chord*
Ming’s minions burst in and abduct you to the planet Ming. “So!” smiles Ming the Merciless in his merciless way, “My astronomers and physicists, who have had thousands of years to improve their sciences beyond your primitive level, assure me that all this will pass, yes, even I myself! One day it will be as if none had ever lived! Just rocks and dead stars, and insufficient complexity to ever again assemble creatures such as us, though it last a Graham number of years!”
“Tell me, knowing this—and I am as known for my honesty as for my evil, for see! I have not executed my scientists for telling me an unwelcome truth—are you truly indifferent as to whether I let you go, or hand you over to my torturers? Does this touch of the branding iron mean nothing?”
*sizzle*
I feel like pointing out that Graham’s number is big enough that if the universe lasted that long, it would effectively visit every state it possibly can, unless the universe is fucking huge.
I am not completely indifferent to being tortured, so in your hypothetical, Kennaway, I will try to get Ming to let me go because in your hypothetical I know I cannot have a permanent effect on reality.
But when faced with a choice between having a positive permanent effect on reality and avoiding being tortured I’ll always choose having the permanent effect if I can.
Almost everybody gives in under torture. Almost everyone will eventually tell an interrogator skilled in torture everything they know, e.g., the passphrase to the rebel mainframe. Since I have no reason to believe I am any different in that regard, there are limits to my ability to choose the way I said. But for most practical purposes, I can and will choose the way I said. In particular, I think I can calmly choose being tortured over losing my ability to have a permanent effect on reality: it is just that once the torture actually starts, I will probably lose my resolve.
I am worried, Kennaway, that our conversation about my way of valuing things will distract you from what I wrote below about the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder from a surgical procedure. Your scenario is less than ideal for exploring what intrinsic value people assign to internal experience: it is better to present people with a choice of being killed painlessly and being killed after 24 hours of intense pain and then asking what benefit to their best friend or to humanity would induce them to choose the intense pain.