Comments on: What Do Nature Lovers Love?

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:02:31 +0000

I just added to this post.

By: Tim Tyler

Tim Tyler — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:50:09 +0000

Re: I rather doubt that ecosystems of diverse artifical organisms can be created by man to replace lost ones (and I’m biologically well educated). If they can be, good – but how do we know?

Look at the universe of software – where there are many different types of program, each with many copies. That is roughly the level of diversity to be expected in ecosystems created by man – and we can expect something very similar once we have some more decent robots.

By: Tim Tyler

Tim Tyler — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:40:34 +0000

The evolutionary process works to minimise conflict – because it is a wasteful and inefficient use of resources. Thus we see large numbers of mock battles, lots of signalling intended to avoid direct conflict, and the virtualisation of warfare – as seen in the arenas of business and sport.

Real conflicts still happen – but the evolutionary process is not done yet. Once the software/hardware divide permeates nature, things will improve further.

By: Tim Tyler

Tim Tyler — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:55:03 +0000

There has been quite a bit of competition over the past 3.7 billion years – it has certainly been a stable state so far. Any agents with big power advantages in the past have tended to reproduce – and then their descendants diverged and competed among each other.

By: Tim Tyler

Tim Tyler — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:52:40 +0000

The “dumb nanobot” scenario is incredibly unlikely – and the “dumb nanobot that can’t evolve” scenario is even more ridiculous. Do we really need to spend time considering such thought experiments?

By: Roko

Roko — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:13:20 +0000

I think that there is an implicit agreement that when Robin is presented with a sufficiently-detailed-to-be-understandable description of a particular upload life that I deem as “inhumane”, he will choose. I may do an OB post to describe such a scenario.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:07:01 +0000

I refused to make a choice I when I didn’t understand the options.

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:55:20 +0000

@Wei: Well, if you do that, I’m probably going to respond by pointing out that Robin refused to choose at the point where Roko pressed him to specifically endorse a particular inhumane outcome or else deny that it would be an acceptable outcome of competition. Which suggests that Robin has some measure of allegiance to competition, but something like ordinary human morality alongside it, and so would lose either way if forced to choose even hypothetically.

By: magfrump

magfrump — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:08:46 +0000

“preference for weaker species, which creates a weaker ecology.”

How is human interest related to the survival strength of a species? It is more related to novel mutations (tangible utility), cuteness (less-tangible utility), and possibly sympathetic preference for life over death. Taking action to preserve these things is in human interest. Nature-lover ideology often refers to the cuteness factor, but it also references human utility (i.e. from whatever rare species of undiscovered amazonian frog). Humans naturally interact with these species (i.e. by chopping down forests and building roads) which can take away from human utility (by killing off undiscovered cancer-curing frogs and replacing them with crows, which we already have a bunch of).

Saying that “building roads is bad” is different from saying “previously building roads gave us high utility, but now the utility of not-building is potentially higher because cancer-curing frogs might live in those roads.”

Human behavior changes because conditions change. This is (I hope?) the contradiction jonathan referred to.

i.e. in the past, there were no limits on businesses and lots of competition. Now, there is less competition because big businesses can squash it. Since conditions have changed (the size of businesses and their power) maybe a different response (regulation of business power) will create more utility (competition among coffee shops rather than 4 Starbucks on one block that are all closed at 9 pm on Saturday).

By: Roko

Roko — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:45:02 +0000

@Robin:

Sure, perhaps a comment thread is not the best place to thrash out the true nature of our difference. I’ll see you at the Summit!