From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Sep 17 2001 - 17:19:38 MDT
Brian Atkins wrote:
>
> Study using brain scans shows emotional chunks of brain used in many
> decisions: http://www.nature.com/nsu/010920/010920-1.html
Funny that there's a complex functional adaptation for not taking
apparently justified moral actions, isn't it? That implies a selection
pressure over quite some period of time...
If you know where the emotions come from, you can replace them with
abstract thought structures that implement the same functionality.
Otherwise, of course, you'd better pay attention. In fact, you'd better
pay attention regardless, because a lot of things that look irrational at
first glance turn out to be adaptive for good reasons. (However, it does
usually make sense to override emotions that appear to be adaptive for
very clear evolutionary reasons that conflict with your own declared
goals.)
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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