[ExI] A science-religious experience

[efc at disroot.org]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2025, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote:

>       > constitutes evil, as the previous examples suggest.
>
>       How come, and it what way?
> 
> 
> I gave a YouTube link to a video that explains it. It basically concludes that
> morality is defined as the reconciliation of all systems of desire.
> 
> Here is the paper that video is based on: https://philarchive.org/rec/ARNMAW

Ahh, ok got it.

>       I find examples with infinities, and postulates with god or god-like a bit
>       unsatisfying. It seems to me, if you assume god-like powers, or god(s) you can
>       basically justify or explain anything.
> 
> If it helps, replace god-like with unlimited computational power.

Haha, well, you know I can get caught up on words and definitions. ;) I do like
unlimited computational power better than god-like. The only thing left that
sends shivers down my spine is "unlimited". ;)

> There are many things in compute science that are uncomputable, but
> nevertheless their existence reveals something interesting, or points in the
> direction of something that while imperfect, is nevertheless instructive (such
> as the AIXI algorithm for universal intelligence). We can't compute the AIXI
> algorithm, but it helps us define what a perfect intelligence is.
> 
> Likewise while Zuboff's definition of morality is uncomputable, it helps us to
> define what morality is.
> 
> And in both cases, we might discover sub-optimal, but computable shortcuts.

This is true. I really like your argument about not closing off areas of
investigation. And thought experiments, as you say, even impossible ones, do
serve to high light things, ideas and might perhaps inspire us to develop other
ideas, which could actually bear good pragmatic fruit. =)

Best regards, 
Daniel

> Jason 
> 
>