From: Edwin Evans (eevans@aveo.com)
Date: Sun Aug 08 1999 - 09:40:07 MDT
der Otter wrote:
"My approach (subgoal: stay alive, interim goals: seek pleasure, expand sphere of influence, seek knowledge, evolve until you find a better goal system) may seem a bit mundane in comparison, but it *is* a safe bet. "
TANSTAASF. You could be going to hell.
So, you're tied to a railroad track A and your (maybe biological) children are tied to track B. A train is racing to a switch that you control so in 5 seconds either you or your children will die. An hour later a train is coming from the other direction on track B that is going to kill you if you aren't already dead. So you pick A, and rationalize it to yourself that "sacrifice" isn't "sacrifice" when you use it. Its just when Yudkowsky says "sacrifice", that ve means "stupidity".
To me, selfishness as a goal system seems too complicated to have much chance of being correct. It depends on having a correct understanding of emotions, time, consciousness, and "I".
The time for you to "find a better goal system" is now. (That should be your root. Or is it and I'm just reading your sentence backwards?) If a Genie or an SI asks you what you want, don't say you want to survive (I can imaging how that could turn out!), don't say you want to be happy, say you want what has most overall value. (If you're right about it being happiness, you'll get it anyway.) That is more practical and a little safer bet.
You actually seem to believe Robinson when ve writes:
"But egoism is more than this. It is the realization by the individual that he is above all institutions and all formulas; that they exist only so far as he chooses to make them his own by accepting them. "
Lets go ahead and ignore how silly that sounds. Do you have no hope that anything can matter? That all you can do is make some context-sensitive value that will vanish to nothing when examined outside the system, which is to say objectively? If that's it then, scold me, cause I don't care. Your system depends on my whims, and there's no point putting them on stilts.
Don't satisfice at egoism or maximizing personal extropy. Let go. There may be a better goal system.
-Edwin Evans
"It's optimism to the point where it makes me nervous. When you get to the ultimate ends of radical optimism, you have to look at what it was you really wanted all along, and what that really means." - Vinge
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