SarahC comments on Something's Wrong - Less Wrong

82 [deleted] 05 September 2010 06:08PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 04 October 2010 02:42:50PM 0 points [-]

For convenience, I blurred the distinction between normative and factual problems. But the thing is, given that you have some terminal values, you can start talking rather objectively about "problems" in a normative sense. For example, among people who think that death is bad, you can say that such and such a policy or action causes lots of deaths, and that if we ever think of a way to reduce those deaths, we should consider it.

People who have a certain value, but are unwilling to recognize that it's not being achieved, are being illogical in the same way as people who are unwilling to recognize that a proof is flawed.