Sure, the metaphor is strained because natural selection doesn’t have feelings, so it’s never going to feel satisfied, because it’s never going to feel anything. For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t pick that metaphor; Eliezer mentions contraception in his original post.
As I understand it, the point of bringing up contraception is to show that when you move from one level of intelligence to another, much higher level of intelligence, then the more intelligent agent can wind up optimizing for values that would be anathema to the less intelligent agents, even if the less intelligent agents have done everything they can to pass along their values. My objection to this illustration is that I don’t think anyone’s demonstrated that human goals could plausibly be described as “anathema” to natural selection. Overall, humans are pursuing a set of goals that are relatively well-aligned with natural selection’s pseudo-goals.
Sure, the metaphor is strained because natural selection doesn’t have feelings, so it’s never going to feel satisfied, because it’s never going to feel anything. For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t pick that metaphor; Eliezer mentions contraception in his original post.
As I understand it, the point of bringing up contraception is to show that when you move from one level of intelligence to another, much higher level of intelligence, then the more intelligent agent can wind up optimizing for values that would be anathema to the less intelligent agents, even if the less intelligent agents have done everything they can to pass along their values. My objection to this illustration is that I don’t think anyone’s demonstrated that human goals could plausibly be described as “anathema” to natural selection. Overall, humans are pursuing a set of goals that are relatively well-aligned with natural selection’s pseudo-goals.