And there are others who accept that physics and logic is everything, but who—I think mistakenly—go ahead and also accept Death’s stance that this makes morality a lie, or, in lesser form, that the bright alive feeling can’t make it. (Sort of like people who accept an incompatibilist theory of free will, also accept physics, and conclude with sorrow that they are indeed being controlled by physics.)
I think that’s a misapplication of reductionism (the thing I think Eliezer is thinking about he said it was mistakenly), where people take something they’ve logically attached to a value, and then reduce it to something else, which starts to feel like they can’t reattach it to whatever they thought had the value in the first place.
To make an example it could be said that action A leads to result Y, and that result Y feels like a good thing, so action A feels like a good thing to do. So the person reduces their map of action A leading to result Y so that it no longer contains these things they associate into their feelings or values, because they momentarily look different. Then they can no longer associate action A with the feeling/value they had associatd result Y into, and it feels like action A can’t be “moral” or “good” or whatever. (like, if you imagine “atoms bouncing around” instead of “giving food to starving people”)
I think this tendency is also linked, sometimes at least, to people’s mistake avoiding hesitancy. Or rather having a cautious way of doing things because of wanting to avoid mistakes. So in order to avoid making the mistake of being immoral, you wan’t to be able to logically derive moral or immoral actions, and since morality seems reducible to nothing, it seems that this task is not possible. Kind of like you want to double check on your actions objectively, and when you hit this point of failure, it feels like you can’t take the actions themselves, because you’re used to doing actions this way. But anyway that was just random speculation and it’s probably nonsense. Also I didn’t mean to “box away” people’s habits. I think it’s often very useful to be cautious.
I think that reductionism, when misunderstood, can make the world look like a bucketful of nihilistic goo. Especially if it’s used to devalue.
Clippy doesn’t judge between self-modifications by computing justifications, but rather, computing clippyflurphs.
Clippy would encounter “ethical” dilemmas of the sort:
Is it better ..err.. moreclippy to have 1 big paperclip, or 3 small paperclips?
A line of many clips? Or a big clip made of smaller clips?
Is it moreclippy to have 10 clips today and 20 clips tomorrow, or, 0 clips today and 30 clips tomorrow?
Clippy would encounter ethical dilemmas of the sort: Is it better ..err.. moreclippy to have 1 big paperclip, or 3 small paperclips? A line of many clips? Or a big clip made of smaller clips? Is it moreclippy to have 10 clips today and 20 clips tomorrow, or, 0 clips today and 30 clips tomorrow?
Clippy could have these dilemmas. But they wouldn’t be ethical dilemmas. They would be clippy dilemmas.
Clippy could have these dilemmas. But they wouldn’t be ethical dilemmas. They would be clippy dilemmas.
Not exactly since ethics for humans is about morality, ethics for Clippy could be about paperclips/moreclippiness, or whatever you wanna call it. Or at least that’s how I wanted to use the word in this context. I could be mistaken too, if you really want to argue the terminology.
I think that’s a misapplication of reductionism (the thing I think Eliezer is thinking about he said it was mistakenly), where people take something they’ve logically attached to a value, and then reduce it to something else, which starts to feel like they can’t reattach it to whatever they thought had the value in the first place.
To make an example it could be said that action A leads to result Y, and that result Y feels like a good thing, so action A feels like a good thing to do. So the person reduces their map of action A leading to result Y so that it no longer contains these things they associate into their feelings or values, because they momentarily look different. Then they can no longer associate action A with the feeling/value they had associatd result Y into, and it feels like action A can’t be “moral” or “good” or whatever. (like, if you imagine “atoms bouncing around” instead of “giving food to starving people”)
I think this tendency is also linked, sometimes at least, to people’s mistake avoiding hesitancy. Or rather having a cautious way of doing things because of wanting to avoid mistakes. So in order to avoid making the mistake of being immoral, you wan’t to be able to logically derive moral or immoral actions, and since morality seems reducible to nothing, it seems that this task is not possible. Kind of like you want to double check on your actions objectively, and when you hit this point of failure, it feels like you can’t take the actions themselves, because you’re used to doing actions this way. But anyway that was just random speculation and it’s probably nonsense. Also I didn’t mean to “box away” people’s habits. I think it’s often very useful to be cautious.
I think that reductionism, when misunderstood, can make the world look like a bucketful of nihilistic goo. Especially if it’s used to devalue.
Clippy would encounter “ethical” dilemmas of the sort: Is it better ..err.. moreclippy to have 1 big paperclip, or 3 small paperclips? A line of many clips? Or a big clip made of smaller clips? Is it moreclippy to have 10 clips today and 20 clips tomorrow, or, 0 clips today and 30 clips tomorrow?
Just joking.. :)
edit: added ” ” to ethical
Clippy could have these dilemmas. But they wouldn’t be ethical dilemmas. They would be clippy dilemmas.
Not exactly since ethics for humans is about morality, ethics for Clippy could be about paperclips/moreclippiness, or whatever you wanna call it. Or at least that’s how I wanted to use the word in this context. I could be mistaken too, if you really want to argue the terminology.