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byrnema comments on Strong moral realism, meta-ethics and pseudo-questions. - Less Wrong
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Comments (172)
I don't understand two sentences in a row. Not here, not in the meta-ethics sequence, not anywhere where you guys talk about morality.
I don't understand why I seem to be cognitively fine on other topics on Less Wrong, but then all of a sudden am Flowers for Algernon here.
I'm not going to comment anymore on this topic; it just so happens meta-morality or meta-ethics isn't something I worry about anyway. But I would like to part with the admonition that I don't see any reason why LW should be separating so many words from their original meanings -- "good", "better", "should", etc. It doesn't seem to be clarifying things even for you guys.
I think that when something is understood -- really understood -- you can write it down in words. If you can't describe an understanding, you don't own it.
Huh? I'm asserting that most people, when they use words like "morality", "should"(in a moral context), "better"(ditto), etc, are pointing at the same thing. That is, we think this sort of thing partly captures what people actually mean by the terms. Now, we don't have full self knowledge, and our morality algorithm hasn't finished reflecting (that is, hasn't finished reconsidering itself, etc), so we have uncertainty about what sorts of things are or are not moral... But that's a separate issue.
As far as the rest... I'm pretty sure I understand the basic idea. Anything I can do to help clarify it?
How about this: "morality is objective, and we simply happen to be the sorts of beings that care about morality as opposed to, say, evil psycho alien bots that care about maximizing paperclips instead of morality"
Does that help at all?