

The Baby-Eating Aliens - Eliezer
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/the-babyeating-aliens.html

======
barbie17
_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.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
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.

~~~
barbie17
This is a good point, but I would expect (the more evolved) human beings in
the future to be closer to being fitness maximizers.

~~~
michaelkeenan
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.

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juanpablo
From the 4th part of the same story

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/interlude-with-the-
con...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/interlude-with-the-
confessor.html)

"'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?

~~~
gjm11
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.

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ph0rque
a pdf version, for those who prefer such things:
[http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-
collide.pd...](http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pdf)

------
ph0rque
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).

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

no discussion yet, though.

~~~
rms
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.

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geuis
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

~~~
gjm11
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.

~~~
euccastro
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.

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

((2^2)^2)^2

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

