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Motte and Bailey. An AI will almost certainly lack human values…after all, a pocket calculator also lacks them,,,but to be dangerous it also needs to have inhuman values, and to pursue them incorrigibly, and to be adaptive about how it pursues them. In particular, it is not clear that it is even possible for a self modifying AI to have stable goals.

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Heterosexual marriage+children was never mandatory, and was never seen as being threatened by celibate priests or old spinsters.

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There are roughly two gazillion ways that “try it and see if you like it” could go wrong. Just off the top of my head: heroin (you might like it so much you’ll lose your mind), not saving for retirement (you’ll sure like that for a long time), jumping off cliffs (you might not be around to like anything any more), rape (other people might not like it), pretty much everything in Meditations on Moloch (you and other people are either ok or miserable, but don’t even know you’re trapped in a shitty system).

I’ve been careful to withhold my actual position on polyamory (and gay acceptance for that matter), because it’s (1) a bother to explain, (2) probably inflammatory, and (3) irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. But said position was formed with access to the following evidence:

Exhibit A: I tried polyamory a few years ago, mostly by accident. (I was rather disaffected at the time.) It worked okay. I really appreciated some aspects of it, e.g. spreading out the emotional load. I came away from it with the conclusion that I needed to cultivate more close relationships, which (along with other evidence) basically meant that I had to stop sleeping with all my friends.

Exhibit B: “Anna” is a 20-year-old kid who became poly after escaping an “abusive” relationship with an older guy, who appears to have been a asshole in general, and made her feel bad in particular after she cheated on him. (I put “abusive” in scare quotes because assholery is not tantamount to abuse. She may have been withholding information, but she seemed to think that what she gave was sufficient.) She decided she would no longer let anyone make her feel bad, or tell her how to feel, for that matter. Because she now only has relationships “on her own terms”, she refuses to be monogamous. Not a straw man, just a dumb college kid.

Exhibit C: “Gene” is a twentysomething rationalist. He decided to become poly when he saw other rationalists doing it, read a bit about how jealousy has not been a problem for them, and thought, “Gee, it really doesn’t seem like there’s any reason why I shouldn’t. Why, society, why have you shackled me with these irrational inhibitions?” It’s working out okay so far, in that his overall volume of complaints about love and/or sex has remained constant.

Exhibit D: “Harry” and “Sally” are in their forties, and have been polyamorous since before it was cool. They are basically hippies in every way. They seem to be happy, but no one takes them seriously.

None of this is good evidence for any position. It ain’t anti-empiricism to try and think about it some more.

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Do I really need to explain why this counts as passive aggressive?

“I have professional responsibilities to attend to, and so do not have the time to continue most of this conversation further. ”

How are you taking more than 10-30 minutes posting? This isn’t incredibly difficult issues and there is little need to look items up.

“This is contrary to your earlier claim that (non-fundamentalist) Christianity “makes no predictions,” which I (charitably) took to mean that it and its negation gave all evidence the same probability, thus making it impossible to confirm or disconfirm. ”

I should have been more precise- make no testable predictions (have you never argued with atheists before? Charitable is odd unless you’ve never run into Russel’s Tea Pot). If people can be given mystical experiences by MRIs, people won’t abandon religion because they don’t recognize it as a falsifiable event.

Fundamentalism makes testable predictions (and is wrong) but you can’t use that against it in favor of other versions of religion because they have retreated from making testable predictions as fast as they can.

“There is nothing incompatible between Catholicism and evidentialism.”

Aside from the repeated miracles that Catholicism covers you mean? Because that contradicts the evidence that violations of the laws of nature do not happen.

” I believe that traditional Christian theism, which Catholics share in common with many other Christians, is the view best supported by the overall evidence.”

And I’ve been arguing that fundamentalist protestant is also supported to the same level of accuracy. If the bible is divinely inspired and literally true than it is stronger evidence than all other sources which is why fundamentalists accept it over everything else.

“Tradition is evidence, but it’s not indefeasible and trust in tradition is justified by more epistemically basic considerations.”

Which is why you are Jewish, right? Tradition can’t be evidence for Catholicism and not other religious traditions which makes it a null when it comes to determining between them.

” I do not believe in “discarding” any evidence. Whatever you’re attacking, it’s not my view and it’s not the only possible Catholic view.”

If you accept the New Testament, you believe in discarding evidence. The New Testament was chosen from a variety of Gospels. Now you can claim that not all of the discards were written by the apostles but if you believe that God can inspire people (which seems to be your position in relation to the Old Testament) it is unclear why you’d discard them. There is certainly dispute about how old several of them are and it is unclear if the church had better information or if there was simply a political power play (which, given the feuding of different sects isn’t too unlikely).

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I have professional responsibilities to attend to, and so do not have the time to continue most of this conversation further. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere at any rate, since you seem determined to misinterpet me. Case in point:

“If you admit that they are evidence for both, then you are granting my point that some observations are more probable on Christian theism than they are otherwise.”

What? If they are evidence for religion that doesn’t increase the odds of Christianity relative to other religions, only relative to atheism.

I never said that religious experiences increase the odds of Christianity relative to other religions. E is evidence for H iff P(H|E&K) > P(H|K), which holds just in case P(E|H&K) > P(E|~H&K). My claim was just that religious experiences raise the overall probability of (non-fundamentalist) Christianity. They raise the probability of other religions too. This is contrary to your earlier claim that (non-fundamentalist) Christianity “makes no predictions,” which I (charitably) took to mean that it and its negation gave all evidence the same probability, thus making it impossible to confirm or disconfirm.

A final point, because I am weak willed and cannot help myself:

“I never claimed that my epistemic bedrock is tradition. I’m an evidentialist and a strong foundationalist.”

I’m arguing with Catholicism/Orthodox/Coptic versus fundamentalism because Catholicism claims tradition is its bedrock.

I am a Catholic. There is nothing incompatible between Catholicism and evidentialism. I believe that traditional Christian theism, which Catholics share in common with many other Christians, is the view best supported by the overall evidence. Tradition is evidence, but it’s not indefeasible and trust in tradition is justified by more epistemically basic considerations. I do not believe in “discarding” any evidence. Whatever you’re attacking, it’s not my view and it’s not the only possible Catholic view.

If you’re interested in reading an evidentialist defense of traditional Christian theism, I would recommend Richard Swinburne’s corpus. Swinburne is, for what it’s worth, Orthodox.

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I think I have hardly ever (once a year or so?) seen statements that polyamory is much better and more rational than nonpolyamory and everyone who doesn’t do it is wrong, and never from important central community members.

From HPMOR’s author’s notes:

Before anyone asks, yes, we’re polyamorous – I am in long-term relationships with three women, all of whom are involved with more than one guy. Apologies in advance to any 19th-century old fogies who are offended by our more advanced culture.

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I didn’t think it was so bad, it was a powerpoint version of his whole philosophy, and that’s a useful thing to have around.

What a coincidence; I hate powerpoint, too!

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