SilasBarta comments on Morality as Parfitian-filtered Decision Theory? - Less Wrong

24 Post author: SilasBarta 30 August 2010 09:37PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (270)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: SilasBarta 02 September 2010 07:26:05PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not entirely clear on where the contradiction is, but I will say that there are both genetic and memetic Parfitian filters, and prevailing memes about IP have kept us from "branching off" into a world we might regard as better, and have thereby been Parfit-filtered out.

I don't claim that the content of moral judgments will be the same, of course, just that similar feelings will exist when one makes them, because (for historical reasons) they impose a very different constraint on our reasoning than the kind that purely considers CaMELs.

But again, I would need a better explanation of the contradiction to give a better reply.

Comment author: kodos96 03 September 2010 02:24:13AM 0 points [-]

What I was trying to say was that if optimal behavior on PH-style problems is selected for, and if IP is indeed analogous to PH (with respecting IP rights equivalent to paying Omega), then why hasn't evolution resulted in everyone having the moral intuition to respect IP rights? I suppose the obvious retort is that evolution is slow and hasn't had time to catch up with internet-era IP issues... although I'm not really clear here on whether we're talking about genetic or memetic evolution... I guess I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say.... I think I'm just gonna have to revert to my original reaction, which is that PH is just not an effective intuition pump for IP, hence the confusion.