From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jun 03 2002 - 21:47:56 MDT
E. Shaun wrote:
>
> What pointless drivel. What exactly does this say Eliezer? Don't you
> think the rest of us know exactly what your thoughts are on this
> matter? Without getting too close to ad hominem, I'm sure I could find a
> line between fantasy and reality where I could just as easily put your
> ideas on the Singularity.
Very well then; I shall explicate.
I can't read Shakespeare. It's old, it's slow, it's barely comprehensible,
there are too many cliches, and "Romeo and Juliet", however venerable it may
be, contains maybe one-twentieth the tragic impact of, say, "Dancer in the
Dark". I am sure that Hitchcock was a brilliant filmmaker in his time but
today, "Psycho" contains roughly the total horror of, say, thirty seconds
worth of Hellraiser II. And the special effects in Star Wars are, to put it
kindly, lame.
These comparisons may be deemed unfair by some. They are unfair. They are
also true.
Kipling remains one of my favorite poets. And he may have been an
enlightened guy, for his time; didn't he suggest that the British actually
had some responsibility toward their subject nations, rather than simply
exploiting them followed by wiping them off the globe? But there were still
some educated white British, even in Kipling's time, who came to the
realization that other races were not only human but in fact no different
and fully deserving of equal rights. It was not impossible to come to that
realization in Kipling's time, only difficult. And regardless of whether we
choose to regard the circumstances as excusing him, Kipling was a racist and
this does detract from my ability to enjoy certain of his poetry.
Let us take Ayn Rand. Was she, perhaps, comparatively enlightened for her
times? Yes. Was she rational by the standards of her times? Yes. Is she
a strong rationalist by today's standards? No. Greg Egan is a
rationalist. Robert Pirsig is a rationalist. Nick Bostrom is a
rationalist. Today Ayn Rand qualifies at most as an aspiring student of
rationality and not a very good student at that. She bears the same
relation to a rational analyst of morality as does Plato to Karl Popper;
Plato simply knew how to line up pseudo-rationalisms in the service of his
prior conclusions, while Karl Popper knew how to use actual rational
thoughts to produce new ideas and not just prove the ideas you started out
with. I doubt that Ayn Rand's attempt to produce a rational morality
produced any more morality than she started with, and from the perspective
of a modern, evolutionary-psychology-aware altruist, "Atlas Shrugged" simply
amounts to "This is why *my* tribe should rule the world."
Yes, I've read Atlas Shrugged. It didn't strike as brilliant, it struck me
as one more instance of moralizing tribalism. I could see, reading it, why
it might have been hot stuff a few generations back; and I could see,
reading it, why it might still be able to seduce impressionable minds
today. But it is no longer a brilliant work by modern-day standards. Nor
should it be. Time advances. Knowledge advances. Rationality advances.
What was once brilliant is no longer adequate. What was once enlightened is
no longer tolerable. I like living in that world. It means we're getting
somewhere. It may also mean that in a few generations, or more likely less
than one generation, Eliezer Yudkowsky circa 2002 will look like an idiot.
I like living in that world too.
Let us make no excuses for those on whose shoulders we stand. Let us use
them and then discard them like used Kleenex. We may respect them as
individuals for having advanced the knowledge of their generation. If their
ideas and works no longer meet the standards of today's generation, those
ideas should on no account be respected more because of their age.
Individual brilliance in any given generation is measured by how much you
advance the knowledge of your times, but it is expected that, having
advanced knowledge, your ideas will in turn be overtaken and left in the
dust by future generations. Ayn Rand may still be worthy of respect.
"Atlas Shrugged" is now a heap of junk. It is the ENIAC of libertarian
fiction. It is neither entertaining or morally tolerable to a modern-day
thinker. Let us leave it in the dustbin of history where it belongs, to be
studied only by those who are interested in the pathology of past mistakes.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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