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Comment by 54 Stacks Nasus on Potential Research Topic: Vingean Reflection, Value Alignment and Aspiration · 2020-05-09T13:03:56.161Z · LW · GW

Very interesting reflection here on Callard's proposition (I watched the interview, haven't read the book yet). I'm actually going to look into this, given that I'm writing up my dissertation on the value alignment problem, mainly investigating the current decision theories, so this is relevant. I put up a couple of comments on YouTube that I'll share here:

I feel like she's hinting at a potential neurocognitive deterministic notion, where all the coincidences and external environmental factors play only or mostly as complimentary, and they all need to click somewhat at the right time for an individual to decide "I'm going to become an excellent golfer" or a "Gourmand". I could be misunderstanding her, but it feels like pieces of the puzzle only fall into place with that click that happens in the individuals' brain. With regards to her mentioning of what Nietzsche said, no one is born with an entirely blank slate, IMO. What is encoded into your genes, albeit your genes aren't gonna determine from the moment of conception whether you're gonna be into Death Metal or Jazz, but still nonetheless create some forms of future behavioral and cognitive direction which would lead you into some areas of personality cultivation as opposed to other potential areas. Environmental factors and randomness do have a hand in all of this of course, I don't mean to sound too deterministic here, just giving some credit to neuroscience and biology as well.

The paradox of Vingean Reflection sounds a bit similar to the one about a brain that is intelligent enough to understand itself.

I appreciate your post, and I will be looking further into this now! Hopefully I'll share my findings here soon.