[extropy-chat] Engineered Religion

[justin corwin]

>"No child of mine will ever cower before an imaginary God. It is
beneath the dignity of >human beings and it is beneath the dignity of
our descendants. If the lightning is beautiful, >then let us see the
beauty in electricity without need for thunder deities; for if we
cannot >learn to take joy in the merely real, our lives will be empty
indeed."

~Eliezer Yudkowsky

One great fear of mine is the tyrrany of sounding good. Eliezer is a
prime example of a person who has tuned and tuned in the search for
rationality. Unfortunately, I suspect, there is a class of
'improvements' one can make which correspond more to obscuring flaws
than making true statements. It is a problem I have noted myself on
more than one occasion. Here Eliezer is responding to a theist who
complained that we need to instill our mind children with some kind of
religion that will force them to respect their elders, lest we be
obsoleted. He continues:

>"But I'm not going to try to hardcode that, not in a child nor in an
AI. As an atheist, I have >a simple, matter-of-fact confidence that
religionists once had and relinquished long ago. I >don't think I need
to load the dice for my answer to win. All I need is to set in motion
the >dynamics that seek truth, i.e., some computable approximation of
Solomonoff induction. If >there were the tiniest shred of truth to
religion, that would be enough to uncover it. If you >have even a
droplet of honest belief left, not just empty excuses for a faith you
lost long >ago, you will not ask me to load an AI's dice in favor of
your pet theory. Let the truth win >out."

All true statements. All very appealing (at least to this rationalist
and this truthseeker). But, the subtle shift in conversation here is
quite nearly unnoticed. We've transitioned to instilling beliefs in a
mind, to better them and ourselves, to talking about the structure of
the mind, to fixing it so there is only one answer. Perhaps because
the theist is muddled in his thinking this blanket approach is valid.
It's true that Eliezer's objections do entirely refute John C Wright's
theistic aspirations. But his argument does not directly address his
points.

A general question: What is intellectual honesty? Eliezer has a real
commitment to truth. However, and I fear this is a general point,
being committed to truth is not sufficient. Eliezer in this example,
and others in many examples (I choose Eliezer because I believe he's
not making any other mistakes here) has changed the context, the
discussion has been shifted to allow him his total commitment to
certainty. By changing the context slightly he's found a place where
he can shoot down this theistic argument with perfect aplomb and sound
like a hero. But is he? He's making arguments that are true, and
insightful(even poetic, perhaps) but they aren't in the original exact
vein of discussion. Isn't that somewhat misleading? Or am I making
something of a molehill? Perhaps Eliezer has simply reframed the
question in general terms, much as I'm generalizing his statements for
logical effect.

Let's continue in that vein, and move reducto ad absurdum. Suppose a
fully rational, truthful being, that only chooses to engage in
discussion when certain, and always seeks to twist contexts to those
he's more comfortable in, to the limits of his self respect and
intellectual honesty. Luckily, mythology is replete with examples of
this type. The Zen Master, the Oracle, Yoda, all inscrutable
characters who are right, and insightful, and powerful creatures, but
maddening, because they only rouse themselves to croak factually
accurate and unassailable arguments, and refuse to engage in fringe
discussion.

There are two factors here. One is the very real problem of authority
acceptance. Many self-aware Masters rage at their disciples on both
sides, chiding them for accepting the Master's word without question,
and also being annoyed when they don't recognize and internalize the
truth the Master offers them. So the good master retreats into
relative silence to avoid corrupting and doing a disservice to all
those who listen to him. Speaking when certain, and able to tell how
his words will affect. This admirable strategy is always blended with
persona maintenence, a despicable practice of hiding, changing, and
sculpting information to maintain certain relationships and
reputations. Shame on the Master who can't bear to have students see
him wrong.

The second factor is subtler, and the one I have been trying to
explore above. The Master categorizes within his subject. He divides
the realm of his understanding by function or taxonomy, he asks
questions and answers with statements which exist along those lines.
The Fool asks sweeping, conjoined questions, stabs at understanding
that smears across the subject. The Master, presented with these
questions, maps the question to his understanding, finding pieces of
it within some division of his knowledge, addresses this part (perhaps
rightly) believing himself to have dealt with the entirety. After all,
a single contradiction is all you need to invalidate an entire
argument.

I don't know whether this represents an important distinction when
you're just learning to be a rationalist. I haven't yet reached the
point where it even constitutes a significant portion of my mistakes.
But it is A mistake.

I know there is a rank above that of Inscrutable Master. I don't have
all the details yet, but he's humble and detailed and truthful. She
answers questions in the spirit they are asked, but as correctly as
she knows how. He presents his uncertainty, his incomplete scraps of
knowledge, and his current thinking, because it too, is information.
And she never takes an easy win, when there are more interesting and
informative portions of an argument. Noisy Errors are to be preferred.

-- 
Justin Corwin
outlawpoet at hell.com
http://outlawpoet.blogspot.com
http://www.adaptiveai.com