= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RobinZ comments on A Less Wrong singularity article? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (210)
There are no alien oughts, though there are alien desires and alien would-wants. They don't see morality differently from us; the criterion by which they choose is simply not that which we name morality.
This is a wonderful epigram, though it might be too optimistic. The far more pessimistic version would be "There's a human morality in about the same sense as there's a human language." (This is what Greene seems to believe and it's a dispute of fact.)
Jumping recklessly in at the middle: even granting your premises regarding the scope of 'ought', it is not wholly clear that an alien "ought" is impossible. As timtyler pointed out, the Babyeaters in "Three Worlds Collide" probably had a would-want structure within the "ought" cluster in thingspace, and systems of behaviors have been observed in some nonhuman animals which resemble human morality.
I'm not saying it's likely, though, so this probably constitutes nitpicking.