Neither of those claims has anything to do with humans being the “winners” of evolution. I don’t think there’s any real alignment-related claim that does. Although, people say all kinds of things, I suppose. So anyway, if there’s really something substantive that this post is responding to, I suggest you try to dig it out.
The evolution analogy of how evolution failed to birth intelligent minds that valued what evolution valued is an intuition pump that does get used in explaining outer/inner alignment failures, and is part of why in some corners there’s a general backdrop of outer/ inner alignment being so hard.
It’s also used in the sharp left turn, where the capabilities of an optimization process like humans outstripped their alignment to evolutionary objectives, and the worry is that an AI could do the same to us, and evolutionary analogies do get used here.
Both Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares use arguments that rely on evolution failing to get a selection target inside us, thus misaligning us to evolution:
The OP talks about the fact that evolution produced lots of organisms on Earth, of which humans are just one example, and that if we view the set of all life, arguably more of it consists of bacteria or trees than humans. Then this comment thread has been about the question: so what? Why bring that up? Who cares?
Like, here’s where I think we’re at in the discussion:
Nate or Eliezer: “Evolution made humans, and humans don’t care about inclusive genetic fitness.”
tailcalled: “Ah, but did you know that evolution also made bacteria and trees?”
Nate or Eliezer: “…Huh? What does that have to do with anything?”
If you think that the existence on Earth of lots of bacteria and trees is a point that specifically undermines something that Nate or Eliezer said, then can you explain the details?
The evolution analogy of how evolution failed to birth intelligent minds that valued what evolution valued is an intuition pump that does get used in explaining outer/inner alignment failures, and is part of why in some corners there’s a general backdrop of outer/ inner alignment being so hard.
It’s also used in the sharp left turn, where the capabilities of an optimization process like humans outstripped their alignment to evolutionary objectives, and the worry is that an AI could do the same to us, and evolutionary analogies do get used here.
Both Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares use arguments that rely on evolution failing to get a selection target inside us, thus misaligning us to evolution:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wAczufCpMdaamF9fy/my-objections-to-we-re-all-gonna-die-with-eliezer-yudkowsky#Yudkowsky_argues_against_AIs_being_steerable_by_gradient_descent_
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GNhMPAWcfBCASy8e6/a-central-ai-alignment-problem-capabilities-generalization
The OP talks about the fact that evolution produced lots of organisms on Earth, of which humans are just one example, and that if we view the set of all life, arguably more of it consists of bacteria or trees than humans. Then this comment thread has been about the question: so what? Why bring that up? Who cares?
Like, here’s where I think we’re at in the discussion:
Nate or Eliezer: “Evolution made humans, and humans don’t care about inclusive genetic fitness.”
tailcalled: “Ah, but did you know that evolution also made bacteria and trees?”
Nate or Eliezer: “…Huh? What does that have to do with anything?”
If you think that the existence on Earth of lots of bacteria and trees is a point that specifically undermines something that Nate or Eliezer said, then can you explain the details?
Oh, I was responding to something different, my apologies.