RichardKennaway comments on Attention Less Wrong: We need an FAQ - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (108)
For example, here. Read the whole thing, not just this illustrative quote:
That's a part of the metaethics sequence, to which this posting might be a suitable entry point, which says where he's going, and tells you what to read before going there.
"Objective morality" usually implies some outside force imposing morality, and the debate over metaethics (at least in the wider world of philosophy, if not on LW) is usually presented as a choice between that and relativism. If I'm understanding Eliezer's current position correctly, it's that morality is an objective fact about subjective minds. This quote sums it up quite well:
Unfortunately, when people talk about "objective morality", they're usually talking about the commandments the Lord hath given unto us, or they're talking about coming up with a magical definition of "should" that automatically is the correct one for every being in the universe and doesn't depend on any facts about human minds, or they're talking about their great new fake utility function that correctly compresses all human values (at least all good human values, recursion be damned). I don't know how Eliezer feels about the terminology, but if it were up to me, I'd agree with advising against "claim[ing] an objective morality", if only so that people have to think about what parts of their arguments are more about words than reality.