Eliezer: “But on a human level, the patch seems straightforward. Once you know about the warp, you create rules that describe the warped behavior and outlaw it.”
One could do this, but I doubt that many people do, in fact, behave the way they do for this reason.
Deontological ethics is more popular than consequentialist reasoning amongst normal people in day-to-day life; thus there are billions of people who argue deontologically that “the ends don’t justify the means”. Surely very few of these people know about evolutionary psychology in enough detail to be consciously correcting their biases in the way that you describe.
Furthermore, I suspect that most or all of the people who endorse an ethical code like “the end doesn’t justify the means” would simply not apply that code to themselves in those situations where consequentialism would benefit them. This is partly from experience, and partly because there are two reasons why someone might apply such a code to themselves:
It is an evolved trait to attempt to correct your own evolved biases in favor of the greater good of your society.
Such behavior is not an evolved trait, but lots of people are aware of their own biases and correct for them due to their detailed knowledge of recent research findings.
1 is clearly nonsense. 2 is empirically false.
There must be another explanation for this widespread tendency towards deontological ethics. I suspect that deontological ethics is popular because:
(a) it is easy for humans to apply deontological rules,
(b) (crucially!) easier to check whether someone has applied deontological rules or not. “You lied” is a fairly unambiguous fact, “You maximized the greater good” is often a much harder condition to check, and therefore makes it easier to cheat without getting caught.
Correcting for your own biases towards self-promotion is certainly a trait I would want to encourage in others. However, it is hard for me to want to correct this in myself. If rationality is all about winning, then correcting this bias is irrational.
Eliezer: “But on a human level, the patch seems straightforward. Once you know about the warp, you create rules that describe the warped behavior and outlaw it.”
One could do this, but I doubt that many people do, in fact, behave the way they do for this reason.
Deontological ethics is more popular than consequentialist reasoning amongst normal people in day-to-day life; thus there are billions of people who argue deontologically that “the ends don’t justify the means”. Surely very few of these people know about evolutionary psychology in enough detail to be consciously correcting their biases in the way that you describe.
Furthermore, I suspect that most or all of the people who endorse an ethical code like “the end doesn’t justify the means” would simply not apply that code to themselves in those situations where consequentialism would benefit them. This is partly from experience, and partly because there are two reasons why someone might apply such a code to themselves:
It is an evolved trait to attempt to correct your own evolved biases in favor of the greater good of your society.
Such behavior is not an evolved trait, but lots of people are aware of their own biases and correct for them due to their detailed knowledge of recent research findings.
1 is clearly nonsense. 2 is empirically false.
There must be another explanation for this widespread tendency towards deontological ethics. I suspect that deontological ethics is popular because:
(a) it is easy for humans to apply deontological rules,
(b) (crucially!) easier to check whether someone has applied deontological rules or not. “You lied” is a fairly unambiguous fact, “You maximized the greater good” is often a much harder condition to check, and therefore makes it easier to cheat without getting caught.
Correcting for your own biases towards self-promotion is certainly a trait I would want to encourage in others. However, it is hard for me to want to correct this in myself. If rationality is all about winning, then correcting this bias is irrational.