Doug S: “A human’s beliefs depend on the order in which he hears arguments.”
- indeed. Anyone who has spent any time arguing with Christians should know this. And the effect is auto-catalytic—our beliefs about both facts and values tend to self-reinforce; c.f. “affective death spirals”.
As I have claimed earlier in the comments, many issues in the modern world are not issues that our in-built evolutionary urges or “yuck factors” can advise us on directly. So human beliefs on issues such as which politics is best, whether to be a bioluddite or a technoprogressive, whether and which religion to believe in, whether men and women should be given equal rights, etc, etc are decided by our developmental plasticity as Tim Tyler has described above.
The state of human belief and value is a mess, mostly based on irrationalities and self-sustaining cognitive biases which Eliezer has painstakingly pointed out on this blog. Hardly what I would call “psychological unity”. Yes, there is some unity: everyone favors their friends and family over strangers. Everyone has the same sexuality(ies). Everyone prefers pleasure over pain. But on important non-EEA questions, there is widespread and deep disagreement.
The CEV algorithm, as I currently understand it, would attempt to rectify this by taking the beliefs of every human, with equal weight, and editing incorrect factual beliefs. I am not convinced that I would like the output of such an algorithm.
Doug S: “A human’s beliefs depend on the order in which he hears arguments.”
- indeed. Anyone who has spent any time arguing with Christians should know this. And the effect is auto-catalytic—our beliefs about both facts and values tend to self-reinforce; c.f. “affective death spirals”.
As I have claimed earlier in the comments, many issues in the modern world are not issues that our in-built evolutionary urges or “yuck factors” can advise us on directly. So human beliefs on issues such as which politics is best, whether to be a bioluddite or a technoprogressive, whether and which religion to believe in, whether men and women should be given equal rights, etc, etc are decided by our developmental plasticity as Tim Tyler has described above.
The state of human belief and value is a mess, mostly based on irrationalities and self-sustaining cognitive biases which Eliezer has painstakingly pointed out on this blog. Hardly what I would call “psychological unity”. Yes, there is some unity: everyone favors their friends and family over strangers. Everyone has the same sexuality(ies). Everyone prefers pleasure over pain. But on important non-EEA questions, there is widespread and deep disagreement.
The CEV algorithm, as I currently understand it, would attempt to rectify this by taking the beliefs of every human, with equal weight, and editing incorrect factual beliefs. I am not convinced that I would like the output of such an algorithm.