My sense is that currently the main problems in FAI are philosophical. Skill in math is obviously very useful, but secondary to skill in philosophy...
Philosophy? Really???
My impression of philosophy has been that it is entirely divorced from anything concrete or reality-based with no use in solving concrete, reality-based problems—that all the famous works of philosophy are essentially elaborate versions of late-night college bull sessions, like irresistible forces vs. immovable objects, or trees falling in forests that do/don’t make a sound.
After working my way through a lot of the posts here, I now think that most of philosophy comes down to semantics and definitions of terms (i.e. Eliezer’s excellent analysis of the tree-sound argument), and that what remains is still entirely divorced from reality and real-world uses.
What have I missed? How does philosophy bring anything useful to the table?
What have I missed? How does philosophy bring anything useful to the table?
You appear to have missed philosophy. If you take a historical view, all of our contemporary subjects come from philosophy. The core of philosophy is precisely the sort of things we care about here—having an accurate picture of the world and understanding its true nature. To that end, ancient philosophers such as Aristotle invented logic, studied the natural world, discovered the inner workings of the human body, and started to investigate the laws that tie together everything in the world.
Properly defining philosophy in current times is somewhat difficult based on this—now what was once called philosophy is instead called “Science” and other fields. So what is left is anything we don’t already have an answer for. Philosophers are those who know what questions still need to be asked, and care about investigating them in a manner that will give them a more accurate picture of the world.
To be a little more concrete (to give a specific example), the field of Ethics is considered a subfield of philosophy (largely because its questions are not yet settled), and one relevant question to FAI is simply “How should an AI behave?”, which is an ethical question.
I can agree that most of “science and other fields” came out of what was called “philosophy” if you go back far enough. It just seems that once you pull out all the “science and other fields” what is left has no use for solving practical problems—including AI. Like the pages and pages of debate I’ve seen here on Less Wrong about “philosophical” stuff like the nature of morality, or free will, or “zombies” with no consciousness. Obviously a lot of people feel that discussing these topics is worthwhile, but I just don’t see the use of it.
In continuing to plod through the older writings here, I’ve seen numerous passages from Eliezer that disparage philosophy’s usefulness, including these that I hit today:
Sorry—but philosophy, even the better grade of modern analytic philosophy, doesn’t seem to end up commensurate with what I need, except by accident or by extraordinary competence.
(http://lesswrong.com/lw/tg/against_modal_logics/)
and
I suggest that, like ethics, philosophy really is important, but it is only practiced effectively from within a science. Trying to do the philosophy of a frontier science, as a separate academic profession, is as much a mistake as trying to have separate ethicists. You end up with ethicists who speak mainly to other ethicists, and philosophers who speak mainly to other philosophers.
(http://lesswrong.com/lw/pg/where_philosophy_meets_science/ )
So I’m still baffled by the comment here that currently the main problems in FAI are philosophical. Is there a summary or chain of posts that spells out this change in position? Or will it just gradually emerge if I manage to read all the posts between those quotes from 2008, up to the quote from 2011? Or, is this just your opinion, not Eliezer’s?
Note the distinction between those things being done in the field of “Philosophy”, versus philosophy itself. Note that this:
philosophy really is important, but it is only practiced effectively from within a science
is an endorsement of philosophy itself, though the quote goes on to say that the way that much philosophy is done in academia is pretty useless. So I’m not seeing anything that should generate confusion. When Wei Dai said that the problems are philosophical, that does not entail that the problems should be solved by people with doctorates in Philosophy.
Or, is this just your opinion, not Eliezer’s?
While I sometimes imagine myself one of the world’s foremost experts on the writings of Eliezer, any non-quoted words are my own.
It just seems that once you pull out all the “science and other fields” what is left has no use for solving practical problems—including AI.
If you think that logic, ethics, applied ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind all have no use in AI, then I think you will find yourself in a minority.
Hi Beth. I agree with Thom’s answer, and you can also get a better sense of where I’m coming from if you read Metaphilosophical Mysteries and follow the first link in that post.
Philosophy? Really???
My impression of philosophy has been that it is entirely divorced from anything concrete or reality-based with no use in solving concrete, reality-based problems—that all the famous works of philosophy are essentially elaborate versions of late-night college bull sessions, like irresistible forces vs. immovable objects, or trees falling in forests that do/don’t make a sound.
After working my way through a lot of the posts here, I now think that most of philosophy comes down to semantics and definitions of terms (i.e. Eliezer’s excellent analysis of the tree-sound argument), and that what remains is still entirely divorced from reality and real-world uses.
What have I missed? How does philosophy bring anything useful to the table?
As lukeprog has pointed out, almost everything Eliezer has written on LW is philosophy.
You appear to have missed philosophy. If you take a historical view, all of our contemporary subjects come from philosophy. The core of philosophy is precisely the sort of things we care about here—having an accurate picture of the world and understanding its true nature. To that end, ancient philosophers such as Aristotle invented logic, studied the natural world, discovered the inner workings of the human body, and started to investigate the laws that tie together everything in the world.
Properly defining philosophy in current times is somewhat difficult based on this—now what was once called philosophy is instead called “Science” and other fields. So what is left is anything we don’t already have an answer for. Philosophers are those who know what questions still need to be asked, and care about investigating them in a manner that will give them a more accurate picture of the world.
To be a little more concrete (to give a specific example), the field of Ethics is considered a subfield of philosophy (largely because its questions are not yet settled), and one relevant question to FAI is simply “How should an AI behave?”, which is an ethical question.
I can agree that most of “science and other fields” came out of what was called “philosophy” if you go back far enough. It just seems that once you pull out all the “science and other fields” what is left has no use for solving practical problems—including AI. Like the pages and pages of debate I’ve seen here on Less Wrong about “philosophical” stuff like the nature of morality, or free will, or “zombies” with no consciousness. Obviously a lot of people feel that discussing these topics is worthwhile, but I just don’t see the use of it.
In continuing to plod through the older writings here, I’ve seen numerous passages from Eliezer that disparage philosophy’s usefulness, including these that I hit today:
and
So I’m still baffled by the comment here that currently the main problems in FAI are philosophical. Is there a summary or chain of posts that spells out this change in position? Or will it just gradually emerge if I manage to read all the posts between those quotes from 2008, up to the quote from 2011? Or, is this just your opinion, not Eliezer’s?
Note the distinction between those things being done in the field of “Philosophy”, versus philosophy itself. Note that this:
is an endorsement of philosophy itself, though the quote goes on to say that the way that much philosophy is done in academia is pretty useless. So I’m not seeing anything that should generate confusion. When Wei Dai said that the problems are philosophical, that does not entail that the problems should be solved by people with doctorates in Philosophy.
While I sometimes imagine myself one of the world’s foremost experts on the writings of Eliezer, any non-quoted words are my own.
If you think that logic, ethics, applied ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind all have no use in AI, then I think you will find yourself in a minority.
Hi Beth. I agree with Thom’s answer, and you can also get a better sense of where I’m coming from if you read Metaphilosophical Mysteries and follow the first link in that post.