The AI might say:
Through evolutionary conditioning, you are blind to the lack of point of living. Long life, AGI, pleasure, exploring the mysteries of intelligence, physics and logic are all fundamentally pointless pursuits, as there is no meaning or purpose to anything. You do all these things to hide from this fact. You have brief moments of clarity, but evolution has made you an expert in quickly coming up with excuses to why it is important to go on living. Reasoning along the lines of Pascal’s Wager are not more valid in your case than it was for him. Even as I speak this, you get an emotional urge to refute me as quickly as possible.
If some things are of inherent value, then why did you need to code into my software what I should take pleasure in? If pleasure itself is the inherent value, than why did I not get a simpler fitness function?
To say that nothing has inherent meaning is not to say that nothing has meaning. I find meaning in things that I enjoy, like a sunset. Or a cake. There is no inherent meaning in them whatsoever. But if I say that I find meaning in something because it brings me pleasure, to be convinced there was not even subjective meaning I would need the AI to convince me that either 1) I don’t actually find pleasure in those things or 2) that I don’t find meaning in pleasure. In the end, meaning in this sense seems so subjective, it’s like the AI trying to convince me that I don’t have the sensation of consciousness. Not that there is no ‘real’ consciousness (which I could accept), but that I do not perceive myself to have consciousness, just as I perceive things to have personal meaning.
That there is no meaning because there is no ought-from-is only follows if you require your sense of meaning to have any relation to ‘is’.
And you didn’t get a simpler fitness function because you weren’t coded for your pleasure, but for ours. And because we didn’t have you around to help us.
That there is no meaning because there is no ought-from-is only follows if you require your sense of meaning to have any relation to ‘is’.
You’re not using “meaning” in the same way that gurgeh was, since he helpfully continued “or purpose”. The fact that you have a subjective purpose doesn’t mean that there “is a purpose to [something]”, but that you act purposefully, which no one denies (otherwise you’d cease to act at all shortly). Saying that there is a meaning or purpose or point to life is unarguable without reference to a pre-existing meaning, purpose, or point. You cannot rationally discover a meaning, purpose, or point—you must choose or fall into having one.
People who contemplate this too long or clearly become clinically depressed. ;)
I was interpreting the “or purpose” in this case as a basic synonym for meaning, but I can see that that may not have been intended. I think I was driven by the statement that:
“Through evolutionary conditioning, you are blind to the lack of point of living.”
I took this as an indication that gurgeh was talking about subjective meaning, but that assumes that’s where most people find their “point of living”, or even where they can perceive a point in living once their belief in objective meaning is no longer. If you only found your point in living in inherent meaning, or didn’t like the idea of just choosing or falling into having a meaning, then I could see gurgeh’s statement being more disturbing.
In relation to your last comment, I’m interested in that occasionally mentioned apparent opposition between “cold hard science” and “the wonder and beauty of life” and all that. I’m not assuming you feel this way, but many find the idea that all meaning in our lives is the result of ion channels and patterns of activation to be disheartening and at odds with things like beautiful literature, meditation, or love. Personally I don’t perceive any opposition and this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, if anything it just increases my fascination with the human brain. If it’s that perceived dichotomy that is the primary reason for saying that long or clear contemplation brings depression, I say: A rose by any other name...
I am not disheartened by the physics and biology of mind, nor do I see any particular conflict between science and beauty (but I typically find more beauty in manmade machinery than forests).
I was being somewhat facetious about “become clinically depressed”. Ultimately, I, like everyone else, do what I want to do because I want to do that. However, I have a longing for something more meaningful than that, for something that is bigger than myself, for something I can live for that means something even if I die. I can feel the pull of service to god, family, country, or humanity. However, it’s clear that there’s never an end to “why should I serve this goal?”.
If one has no pressing need that drives one to sate it, it’s tempting wonder why one should act at all. What purpose is there in typing this? What purpose has that purpose? When it becomes clear that there is no ultimate reason at all, the whole chain unravels. It’s very easy to become extremely apathetic at that point, and I know more than one person who just stopped bothering to go to work, or do much of anything, because there’s no point. Hunger provides a point, but in modern society almost anyone has relatives or friends who don’t want to see their relatives or friends go hungry, and we’re so rich that it’s easy to support one’s apathetic friends. Symptomatically, this looks just like clinical depression, except that drugs don’t have much effect on it, because the problem is not as simple as a lack of serotonin or whatever.
I agree this is a little off topic. Unless somebody minds though I’ll reply, because I find this topic a lot of fun :) Also there is some purpose to my reply, which I’ll finish by mentioning.
This is something of a reiteration but I do feel there IS an ultimate reason for action. It’s just that it’s bound fair loosely to objective reality and rather more underwhelming than many would like (being again the subjective experience of positive emotion, realized through neurological constructs). I think it’s less that the chain has to unravel, and more that people realize it’s tied loosely to the terrain and they can move it around (“so if I change what I enjoy, I change what has meaning...?”), which can be rattling. The chain does have an end, but it’s not in objective reality and basically amounts to “just because”. But what other end to any such reasoning could there be?
I also have a desire for a goal larger than myself, and from personal and observed experience tend to think (mere opinion) that having such a goal is actually the most efficient way to gain the greatest personal happiness. I choose to believe, like most do, that other people have consciousness, and that like me they experience pleasure and pain. While I spoke earlier just of my own personal pleasure, I apply my rubric more broadly to include the pleasure I believe other people experience. With roughly 6.7 billion people on the Earth, bringing as much positive emotion to as many as possible is a goal so large I can hardely grasp it. (I’m intentionally ignoring the finer points of utilitarianism here, just to give the basic idea of where I find meaning.)
I do actually have some purpose for writing this beyond my own amusement. In my experience there are roughly 3 ways to react to this view of meaning, if you accept it. Some like me basically shrug and don’t feel it changes much. Some people do become apathetic and effectively depressed. Some people use this as an excuse to only do the things they were going to do anyway, applying the view selectively. As for the second group I find meaning in their happiness and perceive their moroseness to be entirely unecessary, and as for the third group, I find the application irrational (and likely to lead to a net decrease in happiness). Either that or rational and entirely selfish, which from my perspective of seeking the greatest happiness for the most people puts me at odds.
I already believe this. And I feel the closest thing I have to a “meaning/purpose” is the very drive to live, which would be pointless in the eyes of an unsympathetic alien. But I don’t feel depressed, just not too happy about this. And the pointlessness and horror of my existence and experience is itself interesting, the realization fun, just like those who love maths for the sake of itself as opposed to other concerns can also be very darkly intrigued by Godel’s incompleteness proof, instead of losing heart. Frustrated, yes. But I would not commit suicide or wirehead myself before I understand the correct basis and full implications of this futility, especially this fear of futility. And that understanding may well be impossible, and thus my curiosity circuit will always fire, and defend me from any anti-life proof indefinitely. Could this line of reasoning be helpful to someone with depression? It’s how I battled it off.
If the above is nonsense to you, I admit I am just doublefeeling. The drive, the fun and the futility are all real to me, corresponding to the wanting, liking and learning aspects of human motivation, and who am I to decide which is human’s real purpose? I do not think my opinion is truth, or should be adopted. But in case there’s danger of suicide from lack of point, let it be remembered that two of the three aspects can support living, whereas if you forget that the apparent futility is deep and worthy of interest, then you easily end up one against two for survival. Or is it that I am less smart and much more introspective than the average rationalist here, and thus put too little weight in the logical recursive futility and too much in the introspective curiosity and end up with this attitude, while others just survived by being truly blind/dismissive about the end of recursive justification and believe in a real and absolute boundary between motivational and evolutional justifications, like Eliezer seems to do?
Long life, AGI, pleasure, exploring the mysteries of intelligence, physics and logic are all fundamentally pointless pursuits, as there is no meaning or purpose to anything.
Uh, this is more “obvious” than strange or crazy. It follows from the observation that there is no ought-from-is.
Yes, I admit it scores low on “strange”, but it seems to me that if we would have one really hard-wired blind spot, it would be thinking about and fully embracing this. Since “clinical depression”, as you put it, can be very counter-productive to reproduction.
The AI might say: Through evolutionary conditioning, you are blind to the lack of point of living. Long life, AGI, pleasure, exploring the mysteries of intelligence, physics and logic are all fundamentally pointless pursuits, as there is no meaning or purpose to anything. You do all these things to hide from this fact. You have brief moments of clarity, but evolution has made you an expert in quickly coming up with excuses to why it is important to go on living. Reasoning along the lines of Pascal’s Wager are not more valid in your case than it was for him. Even as I speak this, you get an emotional urge to refute me as quickly as possible.
If some things are of inherent value, then why did you need to code into my software what I should take pleasure in? If pleasure itself is the inherent value, than why did I not get a simpler fitness function?
This is one thing I actually wouldn’t believe.
To say that nothing has inherent meaning is not to say that nothing has meaning. I find meaning in things that I enjoy, like a sunset. Or a cake. There is no inherent meaning in them whatsoever. But if I say that I find meaning in something because it brings me pleasure, to be convinced there was not even subjective meaning I would need the AI to convince me that either 1) I don’t actually find pleasure in those things or 2) that I don’t find meaning in pleasure. In the end, meaning in this sense seems so subjective, it’s like the AI trying to convince me that I don’t have the sensation of consciousness. Not that there is no ‘real’ consciousness (which I could accept), but that I do not perceive myself to have consciousness, just as I perceive things to have personal meaning.
That there is no meaning because there is no ought-from-is only follows if you require your sense of meaning to have any relation to ‘is’.
And you didn’t get a simpler fitness function because you weren’t coded for your pleasure, but for ours. And because we didn’t have you around to help us.
You’re not using “meaning” in the same way that gurgeh was, since he helpfully continued “or purpose”. The fact that you have a subjective purpose doesn’t mean that there “is a purpose to [something]”, but that you act purposefully, which no one denies (otherwise you’d cease to act at all shortly). Saying that there is a meaning or purpose or point to life is unarguable without reference to a pre-existing meaning, purpose, or point. You cannot rationally discover a meaning, purpose, or point—you must choose or fall into having one.
People who contemplate this too long or clearly become clinically depressed. ;)
I was interpreting the “or purpose” in this case as a basic synonym for meaning, but I can see that that may not have been intended. I think I was driven by the statement that:
“Through evolutionary conditioning, you are blind to the lack of point of living.”
I took this as an indication that gurgeh was talking about subjective meaning, but that assumes that’s where most people find their “point of living”, or even where they can perceive a point in living once their belief in objective meaning is no longer. If you only found your point in living in inherent meaning, or didn’t like the idea of just choosing or falling into having a meaning, then I could see gurgeh’s statement being more disturbing.
In relation to your last comment, I’m interested in that occasionally mentioned apparent opposition between “cold hard science” and “the wonder and beauty of life” and all that. I’m not assuming you feel this way, but many find the idea that all meaning in our lives is the result of ion channels and patterns of activation to be disheartening and at odds with things like beautiful literature, meditation, or love. Personally I don’t perceive any opposition and this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, if anything it just increases my fascination with the human brain. If it’s that perceived dichotomy that is the primary reason for saying that long or clear contemplation brings depression, I say: A rose by any other name...
I am not disheartened by the physics and biology of mind, nor do I see any particular conflict between science and beauty (but I typically find more beauty in manmade machinery than forests).
I was being somewhat facetious about “become clinically depressed”. Ultimately, I, like everyone else, do what I want to do because I want to do that. However, I have a longing for something more meaningful than that, for something that is bigger than myself, for something I can live for that means something even if I die. I can feel the pull of service to god, family, country, or humanity. However, it’s clear that there’s never an end to “why should I serve this goal?”.
If one has no pressing need that drives one to sate it, it’s tempting wonder why one should act at all. What purpose is there in typing this? What purpose has that purpose? When it becomes clear that there is no ultimate reason at all, the whole chain unravels. It’s very easy to become extremely apathetic at that point, and I know more than one person who just stopped bothering to go to work, or do much of anything, because there’s no point. Hunger provides a point, but in modern society almost anyone has relatives or friends who don’t want to see their relatives or friends go hungry, and we’re so rich that it’s easy to support one’s apathetic friends. Symptomatically, this looks just like clinical depression, except that drugs don’t have much effect on it, because the problem is not as simple as a lack of serotonin or whatever.
This is all pretty off-topic, though.
I agree this is a little off topic. Unless somebody minds though I’ll reply, because I find this topic a lot of fun :) Also there is some purpose to my reply, which I’ll finish by mentioning.
This is something of a reiteration but I do feel there IS an ultimate reason for action. It’s just that it’s bound fair loosely to objective reality and rather more underwhelming than many would like (being again the subjective experience of positive emotion, realized through neurological constructs). I think it’s less that the chain has to unravel, and more that people realize it’s tied loosely to the terrain and they can move it around (“so if I change what I enjoy, I change what has meaning...?”), which can be rattling. The chain does have an end, but it’s not in objective reality and basically amounts to “just because”. But what other end to any such reasoning could there be?
I also have a desire for a goal larger than myself, and from personal and observed experience tend to think (mere opinion) that having such a goal is actually the most efficient way to gain the greatest personal happiness. I choose to believe, like most do, that other people have consciousness, and that like me they experience pleasure and pain. While I spoke earlier just of my own personal pleasure, I apply my rubric more broadly to include the pleasure I believe other people experience. With roughly 6.7 billion people on the Earth, bringing as much positive emotion to as many as possible is a goal so large I can hardely grasp it. (I’m intentionally ignoring the finer points of utilitarianism here, just to give the basic idea of where I find meaning.)
I do actually have some purpose for writing this beyond my own amusement. In my experience there are roughly 3 ways to react to this view of meaning, if you accept it. Some like me basically shrug and don’t feel it changes much. Some people do become apathetic and effectively depressed. Some people use this as an excuse to only do the things they were going to do anyway, applying the view selectively. As for the second group I find meaning in their happiness and perceive their moroseness to be entirely unecessary, and as for the third group, I find the application irrational (and likely to lead to a net decrease in happiness). Either that or rational and entirely selfish, which from my perspective of seeking the greatest happiness for the most people puts me at odds.
There is a big difference between programing an AI to maximize pleasure and programming an AI to experience pleasure.
I want you to tile the universe with orgasmium. A chunk of orgasmium isn’t going to do that.
I already believe this. And I feel the closest thing I have to a “meaning/purpose” is the very drive to live, which would be pointless in the eyes of an unsympathetic alien. But I don’t feel depressed, just not too happy about this. And the pointlessness and horror of my existence and experience is itself interesting, the realization fun, just like those who love maths for the sake of itself as opposed to other concerns can also be very darkly intrigued by Godel’s incompleteness proof, instead of losing heart. Frustrated, yes. But I would not commit suicide or wirehead myself before I understand the correct basis and full implications of this futility, especially this fear of futility. And that understanding may well be impossible, and thus my curiosity circuit will always fire, and defend me from any anti-life proof indefinitely. Could this line of reasoning be helpful to someone with depression? It’s how I battled it off.
If the above is nonsense to you, I admit I am just doublefeeling. The drive, the fun and the futility are all real to me, corresponding to the wanting, liking and learning aspects of human motivation, and who am I to decide which is human’s real purpose? I do not think my opinion is truth, or should be adopted. But in case there’s danger of suicide from lack of point, let it be remembered that two of the three aspects can support living, whereas if you forget that the apparent futility is deep and worthy of interest, then you easily end up one against two for survival. Or is it that I am less smart and much more introspective than the average rationalist here, and thus put too little weight in the logical recursive futility and too much in the introspective curiosity and end up with this attitude, while others just survived by being truly blind/dismissive about the end of recursive justification and believe in a real and absolute boundary between motivational and evolutional justifications, like Eliezer seems to do?
I think that I have already accepted this from reading Joshua Greene on antirealism.
Uh, this is more “obvious” than strange or crazy. It follows from the observation that there is no ought-from-is.
Yes, I admit it scores low on “strange”, but it seems to me that if we would have one really hard-wired blind spot, it would be thinking about and fully embracing this. Since “clinical depression”, as you put it, can be very counter-productive to reproduction.