Every single piece has been tweaked toward the same end goal
I feel like there’ll be a better way to say this sentence once we figure out the answer to your first question,
How can we recognize adaptive systems in the wild? What universal behaviors indicate an adaptive optimizer?
It most definitely seems to make sense to say that systems can have goals, in a “if it looks like a duck it makes sense to call it a duck” kind of way. But at the same time, every single piece hasn’t been tweaked to the same end goal as the system. They are each tweaked towards their own survival, and that’s somewhat aligned with the system’s survival.
Something I wish there are more lesswrong posts for (or at least I wish I’ve seen more lesswrong posts for) is posts exploring alignment in the context of :
Organisms and their smaller replicator components (organisms < cells, cells < transposons& endoviruses & organelles)
Social thingies and their smaller sorta-replicator components (religions < religious ideas, companies < replicating Management ideas)
If you have your favorite post that falls into the above genre or mentions something to that effect, please absolutely link me to it! I’d love to read more.
I’m only halfway through the A-Z sequence, so I’d also very much appreciate it if you could point to things in there to get me excited about progressing through it!
I feel like there’ll be a better way to say this sentence once we figure out the answer to your first question,
It most definitely seems to make sense to say that systems can have goals, in a “if it looks like a duck it makes sense to call it a duck” kind of way. But at the same time, every single piece hasn’t been tweaked to the same end goal as the system. They are each tweaked towards their own survival, and that’s somewhat aligned with the system’s survival.
Something I wish there are more lesswrong posts for (or at least I wish I’ve seen more lesswrong posts for) is posts exploring alignment in the context of :
Organisms and their smaller replicator components (organisms < cells, cells < transposons& endoviruses & organelles)
Social thingies and their smaller sorta-replicator components (religions < religious ideas, companies < replicating Management ideas)
If you have your favorite post that falls into the above genre or mentions something to that effect, please absolutely link me to it! I’d love to read more.
I’m only halfway through the A-Z sequence, so I’d also very much appreciate it if you could point to things in there to get me excited about progressing through it!