Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Single Point of Moral Failure - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Alexandros 06 April 2010 10:44PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 April 2010 04:49:46PM 4 points [-]

On the other hand, I think it's close enough to non-falsifiable that I don't worry about it.

A hypothesis which is non-falsifiable has an alternative which is also non-falsifiable. You don't get to "not worry about it" unless you can show that the prior is low, which is a separate matter from any difficulties of setting up an experiment that everyone will agree is definitive.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 April 2010 06:00:36PM 0 points [-]

The prior has several parts. Would the null hypothesis be that people are moral because there are practical and emotional advantages? That the good effects of religion don't fade?

And just to go sideways a little, should "religion" be viewed as a single thing for this discussion, or do some religions or some approaches to religion have different moral effects?

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 07 April 2010 05:07:08PM 0 points [-]

Agreed, falsifiability isn't the issue. But there is a problem with the question being ill-defined. Questions such as "Does atheism make society less moral?" have to be unpacked using counterfactuals, which in turn can be unpacked only if you have some precise conception of the alternative scenarios within some robust theory. These are missing in all discussions of these questions that I've seen.