Paul, fair point. I’d better say instead that granted a chance to grow up healthy and given a solid (!) education, I’d spend all my other pre-natal person-points on a nice high g. Or at least, I’d say that would make me about the most effective optimiser I could be.
Tim, I think you mean cow genes, rather than cows. Growing large slabs of meat in factories will be great for cow genes, but pretty disastrous for cows. Good for me though, as that’s when I plan to jump right off the wagon and into a nice synthetic steak. Eliezer’s right though; this has little bearing on what he’s talking about.
I’d counter “Parents do all the things they tell their children not to do, which is how they know not to do them” with “Adolescents are inherently unlikely to take their parents’ explicit advice, particularly when they think they can see a bigger picture.” This would seem to fit with your story, Eliezer, and it certainly does with mine.
The things I really learnt from my parents’ experience were the things they never made explicit by giving advice. They were rather the mistakes that I saw (and see) in them that they hadn’t/haven’t recognised or come to terms with. I largely ignored their advice, and wouldn’t really change that if I could. Mistakes are far more informative than advice.
Paul, fair point. I’d better say instead that granted a chance to grow up healthy and given a solid (!) education, I’d spend all my other pre-natal person-points on a nice high g. Or at least, I’d say that would make me about the most effective optimiser I could be.
Tim, I think you mean cow genes, rather than cows. Growing large slabs of meat in factories will be great for cow genes, but pretty disastrous for cows. Good for me though, as that’s when I plan to jump right off the wagon and into a nice synthetic steak. Eliezer’s right though; this has little bearing on what he’s talking about.
I’d counter “Parents do all the things they tell their children not to do, which is how they know not to do them” with “Adolescents are inherently unlikely to take their parents’ explicit advice, particularly when they think they can see a bigger picture.” This would seem to fit with your story, Eliezer, and it certainly does with mine.
The things I really learnt from my parents’ experience were the things they never made explicit by giving advice. They were rather the mistakes that I saw (and see) in them that they hadn’t/haven’t recognised or come to terms with. I largely ignored their advice, and wouldn’t really change that if I could. Mistakes are far more informative than advice.