Because the “doing better” history is written by the victors. It’s our values that are being used to judge the improvement. Further evolutionary change, if left to the same blind idiot god, is highly likely to leave our descendants with changed—and worse—values. So long as the value drift is slight and the competence keeps increasing, our descendants will live better lives. But if and when the value drift becomes large, that will reverse. That’s why we’ve got to usurp the powers of the blind idiot god before it’s too late.
We are doing better, because we are achieving outcomes that have always been valued, like longer lifespan and health. The pharohs and emperors of yore would have envied the painless dentistry and flat screen TV’s now enjoyed by the average person.
The Molochian argument is that there is a pressure towards the sacrifice of a subset of those valued outcomes , the ones which require coordination, which is motivated by the subset of values which are self centered and do not promote coordination. There is no wholesale sacrifice of values. If we do something to sacrifice one thing we value, our motivation is another value.
There is also a pressure in the other direction, towards the promotion of coordination, and that pressure is ethics. Ethics is a distributed Gardener. (Lesswrongian and Codexian ethical thinking are both equally and oddly uninterested in the question: what is ethics?) Typical ethical values such as fairness,equality, and justice all promote coordination.
Ethical values are not a passive reflection of what society is, but instead push it in a more coordinative direction.
Ethical values at a given time are tailored to what is achievable. Under circumstances where warfare is unavoidable, for instance, ethical values ameliorate the situation by promoting courage, chivalry, etc. This situation is often misread as “our ancestors valued war, but we value peace”.
There are no guarantees one way or the other about which tendency will win out.
The ethical outlook of a society is shaped by the problems it needs to solve, and can realistically solve, but not down to unanimity. Different groups within society have different interests, which is the origin of politics. Politics is disagreement about what to coordinate and how to coordinate.
The Molochian argument is that there is a pressure towards the sacrifice of a subset of those valued outcomes ,
but not:
the ones which require coordination,
I mean, that might be what Scott had in mind for the word Moloch, but the actual logic of the situation raises another challenge. The fragility of value, and the misalignment between human values and “whatever reproduces well, not just in the EAE but wherever and whenever”, creates a dire problem.
You gave me the chance to check whether I was using “fragility of value” correctly. (I think so.) Your reply in that thread doesn’t fit the fragility thesis: you’re reading too much into it. EY is asserting that humanly-valuable outcomes are a small region in a high-dimensional space. That’s basically all there is to it, though some logical consequences are drawn that flesh it out, and some of the evidence for it is indicated.
If he is asserting only what you say, he is asserting nothing of interest. What FoV is usually taken to mean is that getting FAI right is difficult … and that is right called fragility, because it is a process. However, it is not a conclusion supported by a premise about higher dimensional spaces, because that is not a process.
Because the “doing better” history is written by the victors. It’s our values that are being used to judge the improvement. Further evolutionary change, if left to the same blind idiot god, is highly likely to leave our descendants with changed—and worse—values. So long as the value drift is slight and the competence keeps increasing, our descendants will live better lives. But if and when the value drift becomes large, that will reverse. That’s why we’ve got to usurp the powers of the blind idiot god before it’s too late.
Closely related: Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch.
We are doing better, because we are achieving outcomes that have always been valued, like longer lifespan and health. The pharohs and emperors of yore would have envied the painless dentistry and flat screen TV’s now enjoyed by the average person.
The Molochian argument is that there is a pressure towards the sacrifice of a subset of those valued outcomes , the ones which require coordination, which is motivated by the subset of values which are self centered and do not promote coordination. There is no wholesale sacrifice of values. If we do something to sacrifice one thing we value, our motivation is another value.
There is also a pressure in the other direction, towards the promotion of coordination, and that pressure is ethics. Ethics is a distributed Gardener. (Lesswrongian and Codexian ethical thinking are both equally and oddly uninterested in the question: what is ethics?) Typical ethical values such as fairness,equality, and justice all promote coordination.
Ethical values are not a passive reflection of what society is, but instead push it in a more coordinative direction.
Ethical values at a given time are tailored to what is achievable. Under circumstances where warfare is unavoidable, for instance, ethical values ameliorate the situation by promoting courage, chivalry, etc. This situation is often misread as “our ancestors valued war, but we value peace”.
There are no guarantees one way or the other about which tendency will win out.
The ethical outlook of a society is shaped by the problems it needs to solve, and can realistically solve, but not down to unanimity. Different groups within society have different interests, which is the origin of politics. Politics is disagreement about what to coordinate and how to coordinate.
I agree with most of that, including
but not:
I mean, that might be what Scott had in mind for the word Moloch, but the actual logic of the situation raises another challenge. The fragility of value, and the misalignment between human values and “whatever reproduces well, not just in the EAE but wherever and whenever”, creates a dire problem.
Molochian problems would be direr without the existence of a specific mechanism to overcome them.
I’m not a believer in the fragility of value.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/y3/value_is_fragile/br8k
You gave me the chance to check whether I was using “fragility of value” correctly. (I think so.) Your reply in that thread doesn’t fit the fragility thesis: you’re reading too much into it. EY is asserting that humanly-valuable outcomes are a small region in a high-dimensional space. That’s basically all there is to it, though some logical consequences are drawn that flesh it out, and some of the evidence for it is indicated.
If he is asserting only what you say, he is asserting nothing of interest. What FoV is usually taken to mean is that getting FAI right is difficult … and that is right called fragility, because it is a process. However, it is not a conclusion supported by a premise about higher dimensional spaces, because that is not a process.