Eliezer, Some intentionally sacrifice themselves for others, some sacrifice others for themselves. Heroes or psycho killers, theists or atheists - they follow the same pattern of satisfying their desire to do what feels "right" ATM according to their (partly learned, partly wired) value system. In other words, they act for themselves. The outcome for others is rather coincidental sice individuals don't have full control about many factors that contribute to the process of building their value system - a system which is closely tied with positive/negative feelings.
Regards, Jiri Jelinek On Nov 2, 2007 2:19 PM, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Could you please provide one specific example of a human goal which > > isn't feeling-based? > > Saving your daughter's life. Most mothers would prefer to save their > daughter's life than to feel that they saved their daughter's life. > In proof of this, mothers sometimes sacrifice their lives to save > their daughters and never get to feel the result. Yes, this is > rational, for there is no truth that destroys it. And before you > claim all those mothers were theists, there was an atheist police > officer, signed up for cryonics, who ran into the World Trade Center > and died on September 11th. As Tyrone Pow once observed, for an > atheist to sacrifice their life is a very profound gesture. > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > > ----- > This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email > To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: > http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; > ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=60620314-ad0be8
