wedrifid comments on A Less Wrong singularity article? - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 17 November 2009 02:15PM

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Comment author: wedrifid 21 November 2009 10:36:42AM 1 point [-]

Fair enough. But are you saying that there is an objective standard of ought, or do you just mean a shared subjective standard? Or maybe a single subjective standard?

A single subjective standard. But he uses different terminology, with that difference having implications about how morality should (full Eliezer meaning) be thought about.

It can be superficially considered to be a shared subjective standard in as much as many other humans have morality that overlaps with his in some ways and also in the sense that his morality includes (if I recall correctly) the preferences of others somewhere within it. I find it curious that the final result leaves language and positions that are reminiscent of those begot by a belief in an objective standard of ought but without requiring totally insane beliefs like, say, theism or predicting that a uFAI will learn 'compassion' and become a FAI just because 'should' is embedded in the universe as an inevitable force or something.

Still, if I am to translate the Eliezer word into the language of Stuart_Armstrong it matches "a single subjective standard but I'm really serious about it". (Part of me wonders if Eliezer's position on this particular branch of semantics would be any different if there were less non-sequitur rejections of Bayesian statistics with that pesky 'subjective' word in it.)