I’m using Eliezer’s definition: a desire not to do the same thing over and over again. For a creature with roughly human-level brain power, doing the same thing over and over again likely means it’s stuck in a local optimum of some sort.
Genome equivalents which don’t generate terminally valued individual identity in the minds they descrive should outperform those that do.
I don’t understand this. Please elaborate.
Why not just direct expected utility? Pain and pleasure are easy to find but don’t work nearly as well.
I suppose you mean why not value external referents directly instead of indirectly through pain and pleasure. As long as wireheading isn’t possible, I don’t see why the latter wouldn’t work just as well as the former in many cases. Also, the ability to directly value external referents depends on a complex cognitive structure to assess external states, which may be more vulnerable in some situations to external manipulation (i.e. unfriendly persuasion or parasitic memes) than hard-wired pain and pleasure, although the reverse is probably true in other situations. It seems likely that evolution would come up with both.
Define sexual. Most sexual creatures are too simple to value the first two. Most plausible posthumans aren’t sexual in a traditional sense.
I mean reproduction where more than one party contributes genetic material and/or parental resources. Even simple sexual creatures probably have some notion of beauty and/or status to help attract/select mates, but for the simplest perhaps “instinct” would be a better word than “value”.
- likely values for intelligent creatures with sexual reproduction
(music, art, literature, humor)
Disagree.
These all help signal fitness and attract mates. Certainly not all intelligent creatures with sexual reproduction will value exactly music, art, literature, and humor, but it seems likely they will have values that perform the equivalent functions.
Maybe we don’t mean the same thing by boredom?
I’m using Eliezer’s definition: a desire not to do the same thing over and over again. For a creature with roughly human-level brain power, doing the same thing over and over again likely means it’s stuck in a local optimum of some sort.
Genome equivalents which don’t generate terminally valued individual identity in the minds they descrive should outperform those that do.
I don’t understand this. Please elaborate.
Why not just direct expected utility? Pain and pleasure are easy to find but don’t work nearly as well.
I suppose you mean why not value external referents directly instead of indirectly through pain and pleasure. As long as wireheading isn’t possible, I don’t see why the latter wouldn’t work just as well as the former in many cases. Also, the ability to directly value external referents depends on a complex cognitive structure to assess external states, which may be more vulnerable in some situations to external manipulation (i.e. unfriendly persuasion or parasitic memes) than hard-wired pain and pleasure, although the reverse is probably true in other situations. It seems likely that evolution would come up with both.
Define sexual. Most sexual creatures are too simple to value the first two. Most plausible posthumans aren’t sexual in a traditional sense.
I mean reproduction where more than one party contributes genetic material and/or parental resources. Even simple sexual creatures probably have some notion of beauty and/or status to help attract/select mates, but for the simplest perhaps “instinct” would be a better word than “value”.
- likely values for intelligent creatures with sexual reproduction (music, art, literature, humor)
Disagree.
These all help signal fitness and attract mates. Certainly not all intelligent creatures with sexual reproduction will value exactly music, art, literature, and humor, but it seems likely they will have values that perform the equivalent functions.