Re: Truth machines

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Thu, 17 Dec 1998 21:04:53 -0600

"Damien R. Sullivan" wrote:
>
> On Dec 17, 11:55am, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > Then of course, being incapable of
> > lying would likely be a social handicap and limit the range of human
> > behavior. Ethics alert.
>
> And limiting the range of human behavior is necessarily a bad thing?

Limiting the range of intelligence would absolutely be a bad thing, and creative lying is definitely a form of intelligence. I, author of "The Ethics of Cognitive Engineering", formally state that this modification should be forbidden except in the most extreme cases of informed consent. (This comes from the person who doesn't think there's anything particularly wrong with performing _enhancive_ neurosurgery on small children.) 

-- 
        sentience@pobox.com         Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
         http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
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