If you have to speak "carefully enough" then you're taking a big risk though you may luck out and get what you want, they're not safe.
If your argument is that unless a powerful being is extremely safe, then they're not extremely safe, this is true by definition. Obviously, if a genie sometimes doesn't give you what you want, there is some risk that the genie won't give you what you want. I thought a more substantial argument was being made, though - it sounded like EY was claiming that saying "I wish for whatever I should wish for" is supposed to always be better than every other wish. This claim is certainly false, due to the "mom" example. So I guess I'm left being unsure what the point is.
Examples of what? Of hypothetical intelligent minds? I feel like there are examples all over fiction; consider genies themselves, which often grant wishes in a dangerous way (but you can sometimes get around it by speaking carefully enough). Again, I agree that some genies are never safe and some are always safe, but it's easy to imagine a genie which is safe if and only if you specify your wish carefully.
Anyway, do you concede the point that EY's article contains no arguments?
I'm making 2 points:
His metaphor completely fails conceptually, because I'm perfectly capable of imagining genies that fall outside the three categories.
Perhaps the classification works in some other setting, such as AIs. However, the article never provided any arguments for this (or any arguments at all, really). Instead, there was one single example (seriously, just one example!) which was then extrapolated to all genies.
At age 5 you could safely wish for "I wish for you to do what I should wish for" and at worst you'd be a little disappointed if what she came up with wasn't as fun as you'd have liked.
I would have gotten the wrong flavor of ice cream. It was strictly better to specify the flavor of ice cream I preferred. Therefore, the statement about the 3 types of genies is simply false. It might be approximately true in some sense, but even if it is, the article never gives any arguments in favor of that thesis, it simply gives one example.
That sounds pretty similar to a Deist's God, which created the universe but does not interfere thereafter. Personally, I'd just shave it off with Ocam's razor.
Also, it seems a little absurd to try to infer things about our simulators, even supposing they exist. After all, their universe can be almost arbitrarily different from ours.
Does the simulation hypothesis have any predictive power? If so, what does it predict? Is there any way to falsify it?
Oh, yes, me too. I want to engage in one-shot PD games with entirelyuseless (as opposed to other people), because he or she will give me free utility if I sell myself right. I wouldn't want to play one-shot PDs against myself, in the same way that I wouldn't want to play chess against Kasparov.
By the way, note that I usually cooperate in repeated PD games, and most real-life PDs are repeated games. In addition, my utility function takes other people into consideration; I would not screw people over for small personal gains, because I care about their happiness. In other words, defecting in one-shot PDs is entirely consistent with being a decent human being.
Cool, so in conclusion, if we met in real life and played a one-shot PD, you'd (probably) cooperate and I'd defect. My strategy seems superior.
I never liked that article. It says "there are three types of genies", and then, rather than attempting to prove the claim or argue for it, it just provides an example of a genie for which no wish is safe. I mean, fine, I'm convinced that specific genie sucks. But there may well be other genies that don't know what you want but have the ability to give it to you if you ask (when I was 5 years old, my mom was such a genie).
I read all of your replies. What are you referring to? Also, this is uncharitable/insulting.
To be honest, I'm not sure what we're even disagreeing about. Like, sure, some genies are unsafe no matter how you phrase your wish. For other genies, you can just wish for "whatever I ought to wish for". For still other genies, giving some information about your wish helps.
If EY's point was that the first type of genies exist, then yes, he's made it convincingly. If his point is that you never need to specify a wish other than "whatever I ought to wish for" (assuming a genie is powerful enough), then he failed to provide arguments for this claim (and the claim is probably false).