I’m hoping we’d all defect on this one. Defecting isn’t always a bad thing anyways; many parts of our society depend on defected prisoner’s dilemmas (such as competition between firms).
When I first studied game theory and prisoner’s dilemmas (on my own, not in a classroom) I had no problem imagining the payoffs in completely subjective “utils”. I never thought of a paperclip maximizer, though.
I know this is quite a bit off-topic, but in response to:
We’re born with a sense of fairness, honor, empathy, sympathy, and even altruism—the result of our ancestors adapting to play the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Most of us are, but there is the small minority of the population (1-3%) that are specifically born without a conscious (or much of one). We call them sociopaths or psychopaths. This is seemingly advantageous because it allows those people to prey on the rest of us (i.e., defect where possible), provided they can avoid detection.
While I’m sure Eliezer knows this (and likely knows more about the subject than I), its omission in his post IMO highlights a widespread and costly bias: pretending these people don’t exist, or pretending they can be “cured”.
I’m hoping we’d all defect on this one. Defecting isn’t always a bad thing anyways; many parts of our society depend on defected prisoner’s dilemmas (such as competition between firms).
When I first studied game theory and prisoner’s dilemmas (on my own, not in a classroom) I had no problem imagining the payoffs in completely subjective “utils”. I never thought of a paperclip maximizer, though.
I know this is quite a bit off-topic, but in response to:
Most of us are, but there is the small minority of the population (1-3%) that are specifically born without a conscious (or much of one). We call them sociopaths or psychopaths. This is seemingly advantageous because it allows those people to prey on the rest of us (i.e., defect where possible), provided they can avoid detection.While I’m sure Eliezer knows this (and likely knows more about the subject than I), its omission in his post IMO highlights a widespread and costly bias: pretending these people don’t exist, or pretending they can be “cured”.