Thanks for this!
Concerning preferences, what else is part of morality besides preferences?
A "source of normativity" is just anything that can justify a should or ought statement. The uncontroversial example is that goals/desires/preferences can justify hypothetical ought statements (hypothetical imperatives). So Eliezer is on solid footing there.
What is debated is whether anything else can justify should or ought statements. Can categorical imperatives justify ought statements? Can divine commands do so? Can non-natural moral facts? Can intrinsic value? And if so, why is it that these things are sources of normativity but not, say, facts about which arrangements of marbles resemble Penelope Cruz when viewed from afar?
My own position is that only goals/desires/preferences provide normativity, because the other proposed sources of normativity either don't provide normativity or don't exist. But if Eliezer thinks that something besides goals/desires/preferences can provide normativity, I'd like to know what that is.
I'll do some reading and see if I can figure out what your last paragraph means; thanks for the link.
Concerning preferences, what else is part of morality besides preferences?
"Preference" is used interchangeably with "morality" in a lot of discussion, but here Adam referred to an aspect of preference/morality where you care about what other people care about, and stated that you care about that but other things as well.
...What is debated is whether anything else can justify should or ought statements. Can categorical imperatives justify ought statements? Can divine commands do so? Can non-natural moral facts? Can intrinsic value? And
In You Provably Can't Trust Yourself, Eliezer tried to figured out why his audience didn't understand his meta-ethics sequence even after they had followed him through philosophy of language and quantum physics. Meta-ethics is my specialty, and I can't figure out what Eliezer's meta-ethical position is. And at least at this point, professionals like Robin Hanson and Toby Ord couldn't figure it out, either.
Part of the problem is that because Eliezer has gotten little value from professional philosophy, he writes about morality in a highly idiosyncratic way, using terms that would require reading hundreds of posts to understand. I might understand Eliezer's meta-ethics better if he would just cough up his positions on standard meta-ethical debates like cognitivism, motivation, the sources of normativity, moral epistemology, and so on. Nick Beckstead recently told me he thinks Eliezer's meta-ethical views are similar to those of Michael Smith, but I'm not seeing it.
If you think you can help me (and others) understand Eliezer's meta-ethical theory, please leave a comment!
Update: This comment by Richard Chappell made sense of Eliezer's meta-ethics for me.