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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Ask Your Questions - Less Wrong
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It's almost impossible for one person's morality to be significantly different from the standard. It's more likely that one who thinks themself different is simply confused.
Um, what standard of significance are you using here? Yes, humans are extremely similar compared to the vastness of that which is possible, but that doesn't mean the remaining difference isn't ridiculously important.
The standard implied by the remark I was commenting on. Literally not caring about other people seems like something you may believe about yourself, but which can't be true.
I read the original post as being about the ordinary human domain, implying an ordinary human-relative standard of significance.
This is ambiguous in two ways: which other people (few or all), and what sort of valuation (subjunctive revealed preference, some construal of reflective equilibrium)? I suppose it's plausible that for every person, some appeal to empathy would sincerely motivate that person.
The underlying genetic machinery that produces an individual's morality is a human universal. But the production of the morality is very likely dependent upon non-genetic factors. The psychological unity of humankind no more implies that people have the same morality than it implies that they have the same favorite foods.
Yes, but it's very easy for the actual large scale consequences of a human morality to be very different. We all feel compasion for freinds and fear of strangers; but when we scale our morality to the size of humanity, the difference is huge depending whether the compassion or the fear dominates.
Hitler and Ghandi may not be that different, but the consequences of their actions were.