I find the money-pumping arguments compelling not as normative arguments about what preferences are “allowed”, but as engineering/security/survival arguments about what properties of preferences are necessary for them to be stable against an adversarial environment (which is distinct from what properties are sufficient for them to be stable, and possibly distinct from questions of self-modification).
Yeah I agree that even if they fall short of normative constraints there’s some empirical content around what happens in adversarial environments. I think I have doubts that this stuff translates to thinking about AGIs too much though, in the sense that there’s an obvious story of how an adversarial environment selected for (partial) coherence in us, but I don’t see the same kinds of selection pressures being a force on AGIs. Unless you assume that they’ll want to modify themselves in anticipation of adversarial environments which kinda begs the question
Hmm, I was going to reply with something like “money-pumps don’t just say something about adversarial environments, they also say something about avoiding leaking resources” (e.g. if you have circular preferences between proximity to apples, bananas, and carrots, then if you encounter all three of them in a single room you might get trapped walking between them forever) but that’s also begging your original question—we can always just update to enjoy leaking resources, transmuting a “leak” into an “expenditure”.
Another frame here is that if you make/encounter an agent, and that agent self-modifies into/starts off as something which is happy to leak pretty fundamental resources like time and energy and material-under-control, then you’re not as worried about it? It’s certainly not competing as strongly for the same resources as you whenever it’s “under the influence” of its circular preferences.
(I’m not EJT, but for what it’s worth:)
I find the money-pumping arguments compelling not as normative arguments about what preferences are “allowed”, but as engineering/security/survival arguments about what properties of preferences are necessary for them to be stable against an adversarial environment (which is distinct from what properties are sufficient for them to be stable, and possibly distinct from questions of self-modification).
Yeah I agree that even if they fall short of normative constraints there’s some empirical content around what happens in adversarial environments. I think I have doubts that this stuff translates to thinking about AGIs too much though, in the sense that there’s an obvious story of how an adversarial environment selected for (partial) coherence in us, but I don’t see the same kinds of selection pressures being a force on AGIs. Unless you assume that they’ll want to modify themselves in anticipation of adversarial environments which kinda begs the question
Hmm, I was going to reply with something like “money-pumps don’t just say something about adversarial environments, they also say something about avoiding leaking resources” (e.g. if you have circular preferences between proximity to apples, bananas, and carrots, then if you encounter all three of them in a single room you might get trapped walking between them forever) but that’s also begging your original question—we can always just update to enjoy leaking resources, transmuting a “leak” into an “expenditure”.
Another frame here is that if you make/encounter an agent, and that agent self-modifies into/starts off as something which is happy to leak pretty fundamental resources like time and energy and material-under-control, then you’re not as worried about it? It’s certainly not competing as strongly for the same resources as you whenever it’s “under the influence” of its circular preferences.