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The Baby-Eating Aliens

overcomingbias.com

63 pointsEliezer23 comments

Morality is an evolved adaptation. The ultimate purpose of morality is to maximize your own utility. There is no reason why any human being would care about a bunch of crystalline insect-like aliens. Practically, human empathy circuits would never span to such alien aliens considering how easy it is to turn it off for other humans whom we consider to be an out-group. From a game theoretical perspective there is no utility gained from sacrificing humans so that some crystal bugs conform to our social values. The correct move from a game theoretic perspective is to ally with the Babyeaters since they are friendly and could be of use in trade.

This is going to sound like an ad hominem attack, but it seems to me that a majority of the singularity/futurist crowd are more concerned with impressing others with shows of intelligence than any other goal. They sound more like a bunch of male apes strutting around vying for alpha status, perhaps not surprising given that they are almost all male. A comment very much like mine (about the pointlessness of feeling compassion for crystal bugs) was posted on the overcoming bias blog but it received no replies/rebuttals. Rather the comments over there simply accepted the premises of the story without question. I have a great deal of respect for Elizer but his followers are frighteningly cult like.

right but we aren't fitness maximizers. we're adaptation executors. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/adaptation-exec.html

for instance: we adapted to an environment of scarcity. now that we live in an environment of plenty a lot of people get fat. they can't turn off the adaptation to favor fatty sugary foods just because the environment has changed. similarly when encountering aliens adaptations that evolved to help us socialize with our own species may lead us to having strong opinions about the moral systems of said aliens. strong enough to take significant action.

This is a good point, but I would expect (the more evolved) human beings in the future to be closer to being fitness maximizers.

They've been bio-engineered, not evolved. The bio-engineers presumably cared more about maintaining human morality than about fitness-maximizing. So they kept the "human morality applies beyond humans" value.

I logged in just to vote you up.

No one cares. (And incidentally, no one should care that no one cares.)

From the 4th part of the same story

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/interlude-with-the-con...

"'Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?' (...) 'The Prohibition, right? During the first century pre-Net? I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books'."

WTF?

There's some discussion in the comments, including some (little) elaboration from Eliezer, the author, in a comment at 5:27pm on 2009-02-02 and another at 12:33am the following day.

a pdf version, for those who prefer such things: http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pd...

Ok, just finished reading the story. Here are my impressions:

- Stylistically, I really enjoyed the story... as someone mentioned earlier, it seems to be a have a bit of a Charles Stross influence, whose SF work I like immensely. Would read again!

--- SPOILER ALERT ---

- I was a bit disappointed in the (real) ending. I would have given humanity a bit more credit for being willing to change, for the better (arguably).

rms posted the table-of-contents here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469426

no discussion yet, though.

I tried the first chapter too, but people don't upvote it... no one has the time to read anything? I would keep trying until it sticks.

Overall, a poor story. I continually tried to place myself in the minds of people living through this encounter and failed. Only the Confessor seemed to offer any insite into this culture. People simply would not jump to such conclusions so immediately. Yes, people might be horrified about conscious children being eaten but they would not immediately jump to conclusions of Lets Invade!

The story seemed lime an ad-hoc mix of the ideas of Charles Stross, Ray Bradbury, and edited by the rambling and incoherent Steve Gilmore

It was so bad that I read all 8 parts!

One theme in Eliezer Yudkowsky's other writing (which is mostly not fictional, at least not overtly so) is that the future is likely to be weirder than we expect, and that non-human minds are likely to be much much much weirder than we expect.

Therefore, if it's difficult to put oneself in the minds of the characters of the story, "that's not a bug, it's a feature".

Also, we are supposed to imagine that the people in the story are smarter and more disciplined thinkers than we are.

Therefore, if the characters reach quickly conclusions that we would agonize over for longer, that again may be a feature rather than a bug. (It depends on how good their reasoning actually turns out to be.)

The story probably does (as it stands) assume too much acquaintance with the ideas Eliezer's been talking about on the "Overcoming Bias" blog; but then, that's where it was posted.

Also, the story reads like a fable in a SF setting. 'Realism' doesn't seem a fitting priority. A more believable account of the mental processes of the crew would add bulk without substance to the narration.

Your comment indicates you probably lost interest before part 4. Give it a chance. It's better than you describe.

<sarcasm>Like the pro-rape defense</sarcasm>

Just remember the only human as we know them in the story is the Confessor.

A central point of the series is to discuss the validity of imposing one's moral standards on others that share little or no background with you.

Just remember the only human as we know them in the story is the Confessor.

A central point of the series is to discuss the validity of imposing one's moral standards on others with little or no shared background.

The first part was great. A great opening. The second part was so bad I couldn't continue.

What a shame.

Thanks, enjoyed the first part, and I'll look forward to reading the rest later.

Great reference of the number of ships they would send to save a child:65536.

((2^2)^2)^2

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