I think Eliezer is strategically lying about the degree to which human extrapolated volitions are in conflict, because doing so helps us to cooperate in making the total pie bigger (reduce x-risk).
I’m glad other people are poking at this, as I didn’t want to be the first person to say this.
Personally, I think giving a slice of the future to an average human extrapolated volition and giving it to a paperclip maximizer have roughly the same value to me, i.e. zero.
Case in point “NO REGRETS How Lotto lout Michael Carroll blew £9.7m on naked waitresses with coke on trays, eight-girl orgies and £2k-a-day on cocaine”
In fact, the rest he gave to his mother, aunt, and sister -- £1,000,000 each. Quite generous for a 19-year-old. His ex-wife with newborn baby got £1,400,000.
I’m afraid to research it further… maybe they all blew it on drugs and hookers too.
Saying that someone is “strategically lying” to manipulate others is a serious claim. I don’t think that you have given any evidence for lying over “sincere has different beliefs than I do” in this comment (which, to be clear, you might not have even attempted to do—just explicitly flagging it here).
I’m glad other people are poking at this, as I didn’t want to be the first person to say this.
Note that the author didn’t make any claims about Eliezer lying.
(In case one thinks I’m nitpicky, I think that civil communication involves making the line between “I disagree” and “you are lying” very clear, so this is an important distinction.)
This is what I expect most other humans’ EVs look like
Really, most other humans? I don’t think that your example supports this claim basically at all. “Case of a lottery winner as reported by The Sun” is not particularly representative of the whole humanity. You have the obvious filtering by the media, lottery winners not being a uniformly random sample from the population, the person being quite WEIRD. And what happened to humans not being ideal agents who can effectively satisfy their values?
(This is related to a pet peeve of mine. Gell-Mann amnesia effect is “Obviously news reporting on this topic is terrible… hey, look at what media has reported on this other thing!”. The effect generalizes: “Obviously news reporting is totally unrepresentative… hey, look at this example from the media!”)
If I’m being charitable, maybe again you didn’t intend to make an argument here, but rather just state your beliefs and illustrate them with an example. I honestly can’t tell. In case you are just illustrating, I would have appreciated to mark it down more explicitly—doubly so in the case of claiming that someone is lying.
Well, actually I suspect that most other humans EVs would be even more disgusting to me.
People on this site underestimate the extent to which they live in a highly filtered bubble of high-IQ middle-aged-to-young westerners which is a very atypical part of humanity. Most humans are nonwestern and most humans have an IQ below about 80.
I don’t think that you have given any evidence for lying
Well, there is other evidence I have but it is sensitive. A number of prominent people have confided to me that they think that human extrapolated volitions will probably have significant conflicts, but they don’t want to say that because it is unstrategic to point out to your allies that they have latent conflicts.
Extrapolated volition is a non-sensical concept altogether, as demonstrated in the OP. There is no extrapolated volition outside of it unfolding in real life in a specific context, which affects the trajectory of values/volition in a specific way. And which will be this context is unknown and unknowable (maybe aliens will visit Earth tomorrow, maybe not).
Thank you for reminding me to include this in my hypothesis-set. I’m pretty sure the idea of CEV is a blind-spot, and is among the least likely approaches to AI control. But I’d only really considered insanity/mania as the reason it’s popular, not intentional lying.
I think Eliezer is strategically lying about the degree to which human extrapolated volitions are in conflict, because doing so helps us to cooperate in making the total pie bigger (reduce x-risk).
I’m glad other people are poking at this, as I didn’t want to be the first person to say this.
Personally, I think giving a slice of the future to an average human extrapolated volition and giving it to a paperclip maximizer have roughly the same value to me, i.e. zero.
Case in point “NO REGRETS How Lotto lout Michael Carroll blew £9.7m on naked waitresses with coke on trays, eight-girl orgies and £2k-a-day on cocaine”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8402541/how-national-lottery-lout-michael-carroll-blew-9-7m-pounds/
This is what I expect most other humans’ EVs look like
You can’t forget the standard punchline “the rest I just wasted”.
In fact, the rest he gave to his mother, aunt, and sister -- £1,000,000 each. Quite generous for a 19-year-old. His ex-wife with newborn baby got £1,400,000.
I’m afraid to research it further… maybe they all blew it on drugs and hookers too.
Saying that someone is “strategically lying” to manipulate others is a serious claim. I don’t think that you have given any evidence for lying over “sincere has different beliefs than I do” in this comment (which, to be clear, you might not have even attempted to do—just explicitly flagging it here).
Note that the author didn’t make any claims about Eliezer lying.
(In case one thinks I’m nitpicky, I think that civil communication involves making the line between “I disagree” and “you are lying” very clear, so this is an important distinction.)
Really, most other humans? I don’t think that your example supports this claim basically at all. “Case of a lottery winner as reported by The Sun” is not particularly representative of the whole humanity. You have the obvious filtering by the media, lottery winners not being a uniformly random sample from the population, the person being quite WEIRD. And what happened to humans not being ideal agents who can effectively satisfy their values?
(This is related to a pet peeve of mine. Gell-Mann amnesia effect is “Obviously news reporting on this topic is terrible… hey, look at what media has reported on this other thing!”. The effect generalizes: “Obviously news reporting is totally unrepresentative… hey, look at this example from the media!”)
If I’m being charitable, maybe again you didn’t intend to make an argument here, but rather just state your beliefs and illustrate them with an example. I honestly can’t tell. In case you are just illustrating, I would have appreciated to mark it down more explicitly—doubly so in the case of claiming that someone is lying.
Well, actually I suspect that most other humans EVs would be even more disgusting to me.
People on this site underestimate the extent to which they live in a highly filtered bubble of high-IQ middle-aged-to-young westerners which is a very atypical part of humanity. Most humans are nonwestern and most humans have an IQ below about 80.
Well, there is other evidence I have but it is sensitive. A number of prominent people have confided to me that they think that human extrapolated volitions will probably have significant conflicts, but they don’t want to say that because it is unstrategic to point out to your allies that they have latent conflicts.
Human-EV-value-conflicts is a big infohazard.
Extrapolated volition is a non-sensical concept altogether, as demonstrated in the OP. There is no extrapolated volition outside of it unfolding in real life in a specific context, which affects the trajectory of values/volition in a specific way. And which will be this context is unknown and unknowable (maybe aliens will visit Earth tomorrow, maybe not).
Thank you for reminding me to include this in my hypothesis-set. I’m pretty sure the idea of CEV is a blind-spot, and is among the least likely approaches to AI control. But I’d only really considered insanity/mania as the reason it’s popular, not intentional lying.