QUES: CFAI [#2]

From: Anand (trans_humanism@msn.com)
Date: Wed Sep 18 2002 - 23:46:41 MDT


The following is a follow-up on a previous question-response.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> > Anand wrote:
>
> > Thank you for the response, but what evidence does cognitive science
> > have for panhuman characteristics that comprise moral cognition? If
> > little or zero evidence presently exists, then why have you chosen
> > to argue in CFAI "that there exists *some* set of panhuman
> > characteristics"?
>
> Have you read "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" in "The
> Adapted Mind" by Tooby and Cosmides? It sets forth the reason
> why complex functional adaptations are almost always panspecies.

(www.sysopmind.com/archive-sl4/0206/0402.html)

I believe the question was misinterpreted due to poor phrasing.

01. What cognitive processes may allow for altruism?

02. What does it mean for a cognitive process to allow for altruism?

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The following are prompted by recent difficulty in explaining aspects of
Friendliness. (Apologies if some of these are wrong questions.)

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03. "...for any sort of diverse audience, humans generally use the
semantics of objectivity, by which I mean that a statement is argued to
be 'true' or 'false' without reference to data that the
audience/persuadee would cognitively process as 'individual.'"
(www.intelligence.org/CFAI/design/structure/shaper.html#some)

What are the implications of the semantics of objectivity?

04. "Thus, when humans talk about 'morality,' we generally refer to the
body of cognitive material that uses the semantics of objectivity."
(www.intelligence.org/CFAI/design/structure/shaper.html#some)

What composes said body of cognitive material?

05. What are examples of non-good/non-bad Gaussian abilities that
ground in panhuman characteristics?

06. What are examples of good or bad Gaussian abilities that ground in
panhuman characteristics and that the shaper network will recognize?

07. "The renormalizing shaper network should ultimately ground itself
in the panhuman and gaussian layers, without use of material from the
personality layer of the original programmer."
(www.intelligence.org/CFAI/design/structure/friendliness.html)

What does "material" refer to? Please give examples of material in the
panhuman and gaussian layers that the shaper network will use.

08. "...requires all the structural Friendliness so far described, an
explicit surface-level decision of the starting set to converge,
prejudice against circular logic as a surface decision, protection
against extraneous causes by causal validity semantics and surface
decision,...")
(www.intelligence.org/CFAI/design/structure/friendliness.html)

What does "surface decision" mean?

09. What is the best way to determine whether an action is Friendly,
and why? What is the _last_ way, and why? (Prehuman AI, Infrahuman AI)

10. What are your present predictions on why Friendly AI will fail?

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The following are prompted by personal curiosity.

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11. What have you studied or what are you studying for Friendliness
content?

12. What recent progress have you made and what progress do you need to
make on Friendliness content?

13. What are the next steps for Friendly AI theory?

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Best wishes,

Anand





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