orthonormal comments on The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It - Less Wrong

38 [deleted] 11 June 2009 12:31PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 23 June 2009 09:21:10PM *  1 point [-]

I also see that the alleged 'gains' from morality are frequently self-inflated, if not false to begin with; while the alternative - intellectual consistency and a recognition of purposeful action as aimed at subjective satisfaction - is vastly underrated, even by people of a 'libertarian' bent.

Most of this is less controversial here than elsewhere, with the exception of the reduction of all our goals to "subjective satisfaction". Many LWers aspire to rational pursuit of our preferences, but with the important distinctions that

  • we recognize that the optimal long-term strategy can differ greatly from the optimal one-shot analysis, and
  • we have preferences about some anticipated world-states rather than just anticipated mind-states.
Comment author: Vichy 01 July 2009 09:51:00PM 0 points [-] 
* we recognize that the optimal long-term strategy can differ greatly from the optimal one-shot analysis, and
* we have preferences about some anticipated world-states rather than just anticipated mind-states.

In response to this I say there is nothing about subjectivist satisfaction which prevents taking these (or anything else) into consideration. Further, I do not mean this in a utility-function sense, but rather 'actual wants derived from valuation forecasts which result in intentionality'.

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