I’m surprised to see Eliezer being so liberal with throwing about “More Highly Evolved”. This is a more misleading usage than what he condemns vigorously in (for example) No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices. That is, if it is not-ok to overload the ‘evolve’ word to include corporations and nano then it is definitely not-ok to stretch it to evolving to immortal superbeings either (it’s less like evolution in practice but far more like it in how the word is used).
“Immortal superbeings” aren’t more highly evolved. Evolution kind of doesn’t work very well as individuals approach immortality. More importantly even if evolution can be said to be evolving in a direction (‘higher’) it certainly wouldn’t be in the direction of immortal superbeings. Or in the direction of sexual behaviours optimised for fun. Immortal superbeings are things we as present day humans think it would be cool to be.
Poly is “something we imagine our idealized fantasy people doing”. This is some evidence about what our preferences are, along the lines of visualizing a eutopia. Particularly because it seems these immortal folks are nothing more than a target for projection. I mean, out of the set of all possible immortal superbeings how exactly was the ‘are bisexual’ trait identified? It’s certainly not an objective feature of the class, or one that all humans would attribute to them.
JoeW introduced the term, not Eliezer. It seems a bit unfair to me to criticize Eliezer for trying to continue the flow of the conversation instead of explicitly correcting JoeW in what I would consider a fairly annoying manner.
I should have added more context—the expression “more highly evolved” seems to pop up dismayingly often when talking about poly (and often bisexuality, too). I have long thought it seems to rely on notions of tribal Othering and the Geek Social Fallacies when used by poly people, but curiously it can also used by mono people being dismissive of poly.
It is so common a poly fail that if there were TV Tropes for poly, “More Highly Evolved” would be heavily referenced.
i.e. quite apart from it being arguably improper use of the term, it’s objectionable for other reasons.
I tend to groan at just about any use of the phrase “More Highly Evolved” as applicable to humans.
If the phrase means anything, it would mean something like “is in a line of descent that
has been through more rounds of Darwinian selection than some reference line”.
And since bacteria can reproduce in ~20 minutes, and it takes humans ~20 years, the
winner of that comparison is going to be in the former group, not the latter.
It is so common a poly fail that if there were TV Tropes for poly, “More Highly Evolved” would be heavily referenced.
Wait, there isn’t? That surprises me.
...
Yes there is. More than one. In fact, I expect there are pages for most of the common poly-graph combinations and potential drama producing failure modes. Tegmark needs a whole new ’verse for TvTropes concept space.
I disagree, EY has enough kudos/respect/admiration that he can consistently get away with being slightly annoying, if anything people feel a slight status boost just from him responding.
And in any case correcting people on such misleading usage is a norm here!
The sequences as they are, a chaotic web, are easiest to continue to study, once you are over a certain level, when you are corrected and the responder links to the arguments, either you update in one more area, or you find a flaw or good alternative interpretation that pushes the community one level up. I make a point of up voting people that do that, because that was what helped me read through much of the top level material.
Does the “highly” in “highly evolved” ever make sense to use? It seems like an archaic term leftover from a teleological interpretation of evolution where Homo Sapiens were the ultimate product.
I’m surprised to see Eliezer being so liberal with throwing about “More Highly Evolved”. This is a more misleading usage than what he condemns vigorously in (for example) No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices. That is, if it is not-ok to overload the ‘evolve’ word to include corporations and nano then it is definitely not-ok to stretch it to evolving to immortal superbeings either (it’s less like evolution in practice but far more like it in how the word is used).
“Immortal superbeings” aren’t more highly evolved. Evolution kind of doesn’t work very well as individuals approach immortality. More importantly even if evolution can be said to be evolving in a direction (‘higher’) it certainly wouldn’t be in the direction of immortal superbeings. Or in the direction of sexual behaviours optimised for fun. Immortal superbeings are things we as present day humans think it would be cool to be.
Poly is “something we imagine our idealized fantasy people doing”. This is some evidence about what our preferences are, along the lines of visualizing a eutopia. Particularly because it seems these immortal folks are nothing more than a target for projection. I mean, out of the set of all possible immortal superbeings how exactly was the ‘are bisexual’ trait identified? It’s certainly not an objective feature of the class, or one that all humans would attribute to them.
JoeW introduced the term, not Eliezer. It seems a bit unfair to me to criticize Eliezer for trying to continue the flow of the conversation instead of explicitly correcting JoeW in what I would consider a fairly annoying manner.
I should have added more context—the expression “more highly evolved” seems to pop up dismayingly often when talking about poly (and often bisexuality, too). I have long thought it seems to rely on notions of tribal Othering and the Geek Social Fallacies when used by poly people, but curiously it can also used by mono people being dismissive of poly.
It is so common a poly fail that if there were TV Tropes for poly, “More Highly Evolved” would be heavily referenced.
i.e. quite apart from it being arguably improper use of the term, it’s objectionable for other reasons.
I tend to groan at just about any use of the phrase “More Highly Evolved” as applicable to humans. If the phrase means anything, it would mean something like “is in a line of descent that has been through more rounds of Darwinian selection than some reference line”. And since bacteria can reproduce in ~20 minutes, and it takes humans ~20 years, the winner of that comparison is going to be in the former group, not the latter.
Wait, there isn’t? That surprises me.
...
Yes there is. More than one. In fact, I expect there are pages for most of the common poly-graph combinations and potential drama producing failure modes. Tegmark needs a whole new ’verse for TvTropes concept space.
Heh. I was thinking of an entire site devoted to poly tropes. But now you have me considering what that would look like.
I disagree, EY has enough kudos/respect/admiration that he can consistently get away with being slightly annoying, if anything people feel a slight status boost just from him responding.
And in any case correcting people on such misleading usage is a norm here!
The sequences as they are, a chaotic web, are easiest to continue to study, once you are over a certain level, when you are corrected and the responder links to the arguments, either you update in one more area, or you find a flaw or good alternative interpretation that pushes the community one level up. I make a point of up voting people that do that, because that was what helped me read through much of the top level material.
Does the “highly” in “highly evolved” ever make sense to use? It seems like an archaic term leftover from a teleological interpretation of evolution where Homo Sapiens were the ultimate product.