Structural Realism

Günther Greindl pointed out that my blog post on Attributes and Relations is similar to a philosophical position known as Structural Realism. I read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Structural Realism and, indeed, I would have to say that I am a structural realist. Thinking about structural realism, I saw that there is [...]

Good, Evil, Morality, and Ethics

I’ve said a number of things about good and evil at Overcoming Bias, and I decided to gather my comments together in one place. I’ve extracted the following quotes out of their surrounding context. The full original discussion can be found in Rationality Quotes 7 and Morality Is Overrated. Arguments similar to mine appear in [...]

A Scientific Approach to Morals and Ethics

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience. — Albert Einstein
The traditional view is that science has nothing to say about ethics and morality. Science tells us what is and morality tells us what ought to be. You can’t get ought [...]

The Second Most Important Research Problem

The second most important research problem is understanding cooperation and how to improve cooperation. Most of the problems that face us today (and in the past) can be traced back to conflict between what is good and desirable for society as a whole and what is good and desirable for an individual (climate change, pollution, [...]

Analogy, Ethics, Cooperation, Evolution, and the Golden Ratio

Consider an analogy of the form A:B::C:D, “A is to B as C is to D”; for example, “mason is to stone as carpenter is to wood”. This kind of analogy is often called a proportional analogy. The Greeks believed that proportional analogy is like the numerical equation A/B = C/D; for example, 1/2 = [...]

Creating Friendly AI

Creating friendly AI is a popular topic among singularitarians. For example, Michael Anissimov writes:
As best as we can currently figure, the amount of effort needed to create a Friendly AI is small relative to the effort needed to create AI in the first place. But it’s a very important [...]