From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue May 29 2001 - 12:38:05 MDT
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
> I'm not sure that the word "mental illness" is fully appropriate here; it
> strikes me as a little bit of an overstretched metaphor.
>
> We humans have *very severe mental limitations*, and we often demonstrate
> *counterproductive, self-defeating behaviors* as a consequence of these
> limitations. Many of these limitations don't have to do with our
> intelligence per se, but more with our limited ability to control ourselves,
> due to our powerful biological drives.
It is more than mental limitations. And it is more than a limbic system
in conflict with the cerebral cortex. It is rationalization. It is a
limbic system that can interface with the cerebral cortex and twist our
thoughts, and not just our emotions, to adapted purposes. And that isn't
really an exclusively limbic thing, either; it's built into our cognitive
architecture. From the perspective of a normative reasoning system,
humans, who "want" something to be true - not true in the future, but true
in the present - and who make up reasons to believe something they "want
to believe" - well, they're pretty much insane.
To the extent that any human being is sane or saner - perhaps due to
studying evolutionary psychology - it is a sane personality built from
insane components.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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