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Counterpoint, the entire biological reason for life is reproduction. You would not be here without the long chain of individuals who sired you. Sexual reproduct
by donatj 5y ago
Counterpoint, the entire biological reason for life is reproduction. You would not be here without the long chain of individuals who sired you. Sexual reproduction favors the advantaged, and wanting to give your genetic line every possible leg up over other genetic lines seems entirely reasonable and natural.
- afarviral 5y agoThe idea that genes have a will and that there is anything reasonable, or generally positive about reproduction seems flawed. Its biological machinery which happens to optimize for replication. I am not thankful to my forebears for reproducing. Their choice to reproduce is of neutral merit. I believe that (somewhat conditionally) sentient beings deserve to prosper and shouldn't bow to genetics and tradition in the quest to do so. This idea that the purpose of existence is to fuck and have babies is straight out of the religion/pickup artistry playbook... I prefer a less bleak purpose than that. If anyone really internalizes/believes that they're just here to spread their "seed"... like, I just feel sorry for you.
- janto 5y agoWell, it's kind of a problem then that, as a human, all that you value as "good" has been determined by what has been advantageous to persistence of your genetic lineage. You may find joy and fulfillment in pursuing the proxies such as love or even truth, but you're fooling yourself if you think it's not because you are at the core biological. We forego bowing to genetics and tradition at our peril. How would we convince a sentient super AI to "not be evil" or even describe to it what that means?
- catlifeonmars 5y agoWhat is the “peril” you refer to?
- janto 5y agoReferring to AI alignment and specification of an objective that does not include the prioritization of our genetics somehow.
- catlifeonmars 5y agoOk I’ll bite. I’ll assume for a moment that, as you postulate, morality is purely a function of genetic fitness. Even if that was true, genetic adaptation occurs at evolutionary time scales. In a rapidly changing environment, genetics will always be out of phase with what is optimal. In other words, any sense of what is “good” or “evil” will always be outdated by hundreds of thousands of years at the least.
- janto 5y agoI guess I'd say that our genetically encoded behavior has a good track record over many millions of years of latching onto what "the right thing" is. That's quite a few chunks of 100k years that it was "outdated" yet still did ok given the conditions. I agree our slow-to-respond genetically encoded behavior/values might not be fully optimal for survival in the modern world. And that there are now threats ("evils" maybe) that our emotions fail to correctly respond to.
- fulafel 5y agoThe selfish gene model often works to explain behaviour, but it doesn't follow that it should be used to justify or guide it. Society and cultures do many things to keep our biological instincts in check and to rise above our instincts. (Also there are lots of preconditions, aka reasons, for human and other life on earth...)
- catlifeonmars 5y agoThe term “selfish gene”, as coined by Dawkins, actually is orthogonal to individual, familial, species or “line” fitness referred to by the parent post. Under the selfish gene hypothesis, genes seek to increase their own reproductive success, and it’s not a rule that this is aligned with an organism or species fitness. (Of course, genes don’t actually “seek” anything in the personified sense)
- coldtea 5y agoKlling your enemies to benefit yourself is also "entirely reasonable and natural" in this context.