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Blue-Minimizing Robot (2)
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study critique (270)
book review (221)
AI (112)
economics (105)
effective altruism (105)
education (93)
creative writing (89)
forecasting (89)
politics (89)
prediction markets (88)
debate (87)
science (85)
AI safety (78)
media criticism (76)
neuroscience (75)
psychiatry (73)
psychology (72)
rationality (71)
mental health (69)
highlights from the comments (68)
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2 posts
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rationality (71) Eliezer Yudkowsky (42) Robin Hanson (19) decision theory (12) self-deception (11) behavioral psychology (6) preferences (5) utility maximization (4) unconscious mind (4) ego syntonic (3) ego dystonic (2) Blue-Minimizing Robot (2)

To what degree do we have goals?

Scott argues against negotiating with unconscious desires, distinguishing between behavior-executors (which have context-dependent urges) and utility-maximizers (which have stable preferences), and suggests we mistakenly model ourselves as the latter when we're actually the former.

lw
Jul 15, 2011 1,971 words 82 likes 52 comments Read Read
consciousness (39) Robin Hanson (19) philosophy of mind (14) behaviorism (7) utility maximization (4) AI goals (4) Anna Salamon (3) eliminativism (2) Blue-Minimizing Robot (2) behavior-executor vs utility-maximizer (2)

The Blue-Minimizing Robot

Scott uses a thought experiment about a robot that shoots blue things to argue that we mistakenly interpret simple programmed behaviors as goal-directed utility maximization, when really the robot is just executing code, not minimizing blue.

lw
Jul 4, 2011 1,108 words 339 likes 160 comments Read Read
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