JonathanErhardt

Consciousness as a conflationary alliance term for intrinsically valued internal experiences

My hunch is that with your interview setup you're not getting people to elaborate the meaning of their terms but to sketch their theories of consciousness. We should expect some convergence for the former but a lot of disagreement about the latter - which is what you found.

By excluding "near-synonyms" like "awareness" or "experience" and by insisting to describe the structure of the consciousness process you've made it fairly hard for them to provide the usual candidates for a conceptual analysis or clarification of "consciousness" (Qualia, Redness of Red, What-it-Is-Likeness, Subjectivity, Raw Character of X, etc.") and encouraged them to provide a theory or a correlate of consciousness.

(An example to make my... (read more)

Formulating the AI Doom Argument for Analytic Philosophers

Recently, David Chalmers has asked on Twitter for a canonical formulation of the AI Doom Argument. After some back and forth with EY, DC came up with a suggestion himself.

After reading the conversation I couldn't help but think that EY and DC had partially talked past each other. DC asked a few times for a clarification of the structure of the argument ("I'm still unclear on how it all fits together into an argument", "I see lots of relevant considerations there but no clear central chain of reasoning", etc.). EY then pointed to lists of relevant considerations, but not a formulation of the argument in the specific style that analytic philosophers prefer.

This... (read 423 more words →)

Replying toA Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

A Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

We will post more when the game is announced, which should be in 2-3 weeks. For now I'm mostly interested in getting feedback on whether this way of setting the problem up is plausible and doesn't miss crucial elements, less about how to translate it into gameplay and digestible dialogue.

Once the annoucement (including the teaser) is out I'll create a new post for concrete ideas on gameplay + dialogue.

Replying toA Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

A Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

Thanks for the link, I will read that!

Replying toA Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

A Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

I really like that and it happens to fit well with the narrative that we're developing. I'll see where we can include a scene like this.

Replying toA Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

JonathanErhardt3y*

A Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

Good point, I see what you mean. I think we could have 2 distinct concepts of "ethics" and 2 corresponding orthogonality theses:

Concept "ethics1" requires ethics to be motivational. Some set of rules can only be the true ethics if, necessarily, everyone who knows them is motivated to follow them. (I think moral internalist probably use this concept?)
Concept "ethics2" doesn't require some set of rules to be motivational to be the correct ethics.

The orthogonality thesis for 1 is what I mentioned: Since there are (probably) no rules that necessarily motivate everyone who knows them, the AI would not find the true ethical theory.

The orthogonality thesis for 2 is what you mention: Even if the AI finds it, it would not necessarily be motivated by it.

A Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

I'm working on a pc & mobile game about metaethics, ethics & AI alignment. (Our steam page + announcement teaser will be up in 1-2 weeks.) It's important to me that we nail the AI alignment part and give people a good idea about why AI alignment is hard and optimism shouldn't be our default position.

Some constraints that come with the medium:

We can't go into arguments that are too technical
We need to keep the exposition of these ideas short

What do you think of the following framing of why AI alignment is hard? Are we missing any crucial considerations? (This is merely our internal script and will later be turned into more digestible... (read 315 more words →)

Replying toThe Zombie Argument for Empiricists

JonathanErhardt4y

Unity of Doctrine vs Unity of Method in Philosophy

"Yet the average person would say it isn't possible."

I'd distinguish conceivability from possibility. In the case of possibility there are many types: logical possibility (no logical contradiction), broad logical possibility (no conceptual incoherence), nomological possibility, physical possibility, etc. Most people would probably agree that levitating frogs are logically possible, broadly logically possible, but not physically or nomologically possible as this would contradict the laws of physics.

It's less clear to me that there are many different types of conceivability. But even if they are: the type I care about in the post above is something like "forming a mental model of".

"But lots of other things were conceivable before the discovery. The narrowing is that, in terms of the correct explanation, the possibility that you get sodium and chlorine is no longer tenable ."

I see, that's a helpful example.

Philosophers typically seem to prefer unity of doctrine over unity of method. This is particularly evident within philosophical subdisciplines. In metaethics, for example, mixed views such as "expressivism is true for social group X/domain P of moral discourse, error theory for social group Y/domain Q." seem to be relatively unpopular.

But the same phenomenon also seems to hold across subdisciplines: Antirealism/Naturalism about ethics often goes hand in hand with Illusionism/Reductionism about consciousness, and the corresponding views in other fields of philosophy. Jacy Reese Anthis, Lance Bush, and Eliezer Yudkowski all seem to be antirealists about ethics & illusionists about consciousness.

Unity of method on the other hand seems to be somewhat rare among philosophers,... (read more)

Replying toThe Zombie Argument for Empiricists

JonathanErhardt4y*

I'd say both of these discoveries/explanations didn't change what is conceivable. Even before the water=H2O discovery it was conceptually coherent/conceivable that electrolysing water yields hydrogen. And it was and is conceivable to levitate a frog as there is no contradiction in this idea. It's just very surprising that it can actually be done.

Replying toThe Zombie Argument for Empiricists

JonathanErhardt4y

Could you give me an example of a case where an explanation has broadened or narrowed what is conceivable, so I understand better what you have in mind?