# Objections to Coherent Extrapolated Volition

> In poetic terms, our coherent extrapolated volition is our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, May 2004, [Coherent Extrapolated Volition](http://intelligence.org/upload/CEV.html "Coherent Extrapolated Volition")

### Foragers versus industry era folks

Consider the difference between a [hunter-gatherer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer), who cares about his hunting success and to become the new [tribal chief](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_chief), and a modern [computer scientist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science) who wants to determine if a “sufficiently large randomized [Conway board](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life) could turn out to converge to a barren ‘all off’ state.”

The utility of the success in hunting down animals and proving abstract conjectures about [cellular automata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton) is largely [determined by factors](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/06/layers-of-delusion.html) such as your education, culture and [environmental circumstances](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/this-is-the-dream-time.html). The same [forager](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/10/two-types-of-people.html) who cared to kill a lot of animals, to get the best ladies in its clan, might have under different circumstances turned out to be a [vegetarian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism) [mathematician](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics) solely caring about his understanding of [the nature of reality](http://www.simulation-argument.com/). Both sets of values are to some extent [mutually exclusive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_exclusive_events) or at least [disjoint](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disjoint_sets). Yet both sets of values are what the person wants, given the circumstances. Change the circumstances dramatically and you change the persons values.

### What do you really want?

You might conclude that what the hunter-gatherer really wants is to solve abstract mathematical problems, he just doesn’t know it. But there is no set of values that a person “really” wants. Humans are largely defined by the circumstances they reside in.

*   If you already knew a movie, [you wouldn’t watch it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_%28media%29).
*   To be able to get your meat from the supermarket changes the value of hunting.

If “we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, and had grown up closer together” then we would stop to desire what we learnt, wish to think even faster, become even different people and get bored of and rise up from the people similar to us.

### A singleton is an attractor

A [singleton](http://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html) will inevitably change everything by causing a [feedback loop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback) between itself as an [attractor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) and humans and their values.

Much of our values and goals, what we want, are culturally induced or the result of our ignorance. Reduce our ignorance and you change our values. One trivial example is our intellectual curiosity. If we don’t need to figure out what we want on our own, our curiosity is impaired.

A singleton won’t extrapolate human volition but implement an artificial set values as a result of abstract high-order contemplations about rational conduct.

### With knowledge comes responsibility, with wisdom comes sorrow

Knowledge changes and introduces terminal goals. The toolkit that is called ‘[rationality](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality)’, the rules and heuristics developed to help us to achieve our terminal goals are also altering and deleting them. A stone age hunter-gatherer seems to possess very different values than we do. Learning about rationality and various ethical theories such as [Utilitarianism](http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/index.html) would alter those values considerably.

Rationality was meant to help us achieve our goals, e.g. become a better hunter. Rationality was designed to tell us what we ought to do (instrumental goals) to achieve what we want to do (terminal goals). Yet what actually happens is that we are told, that we will learn, [what we _ought_ to want](http://youtu.be/lC4FnfNKwUo).

If an agent becomes more knowledgeable and smarter then this does not leave its goal-reward-system intact if it is not especially designed to be stable. An agent who originally wanted to become a better hunter and feed his tribe would end up wanting to [eliminate poverty in Obscureistan](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/the-great-charity-storm.html). The question is, how much of this new “wanting” is the result of using rationality to achieve terminal goals and how much is a side-effect of using rationality, how much is left of the original values versus the values induced by a feedback loop between the toolkit and its user?

Take for example an agent that is facing the [Prisoner’s dilemma](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma). Such an agent might originally tend to cooperate and only after learning about [game theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory) decide to defect and gain a greater payoff. Was it rational for the agent to learn about game theory, in the sense that it helped the agent to achieve its goal or in the sense that it deleted one of its goals in exchange for a allegedly more “valuable” goal?

### Beware rationality as a purpose in and of itself

It seems to me that becoming more knowledgeable and smarter is gradually altering our utility functions. But what is it that we are approaching if the extrapolation of our volition becomes a purpose in and of itself? [Extrapolating our coherent volition](http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2009/12/a-short-introduction-to-coherent-extrapolated-volition-cev/) will distort or alter what we really value by installing a new cognitive toolkit designed to achieve an equilibrium between us and other agents with the same toolkit.

Would a [singleton](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Singleton) be a tool that we can use to get what we want or would the tool use us to do what it does, would we be modeled or would it create models, would we be extrapolating our volition or rather follow our extrapolations?

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