Well, yes, one way to help some living entity is to (1) interpret it as an agent, and then (2) act in service of the terminal goals of that agent. But that’s not the only way to be helpful. It may also be possible to directly be helpful to a living entity that is not an agent, without getting any agent concepts involved at all.
I definitely don’t know how to do this, but the route that avoids agent models entirely seems more plausible me compared to working hard to interpret everything using some agent model that is often a really poor fit, and then helping on the basis of a that poorly-fitting agent model.
I’m excited about inquiring deeply into what the heck “help” means. (All please reach out to me if you’d like to join a study seminar on this topic)
Well, yes, one way to help some living entity is to (1) interpret it as an agent, and then (2) act in service of the terminal goals of that agent. But that’s not the only way to be helpful. It may also be possible to directly be helpful to a living entity that is not an agent, without getting any agent concepts involved at all.
I definitely don’t know how to do this, but the route that avoids agent models entirely seems more plausible me compared to working hard to interpret everything using some agent model that is often a really poor fit, and then helping on the basis of a that poorly-fitting agent model.
I’m excited about inquiring deeply into what the heck “help” means. (All please reach out to me if you’d like to join a study seminar on this topic)