ata comments on What is Eliezer Yudkowsky's meta-ethical theory? - Less Wrong

33 Post author: lukeprog 29 January 2011 07:58PM

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

Comments (368)

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

Comment author: ata 30 January 2011 09:45:04PM *  4 points [-]

"Innately" is being used in that post in the sense of being a fundamental personality trait or a strong predisposition (as in "Correspondance Bias", to which that post is a followup). And fundamental personality traits and predispositions do exist — including some that actually do predispose people toward being evil (e.g. sociopathy) — so, although the phrase "innately evil" is a bit dramatic, I find its meaning clear enough in that post's context that I don't think it's a mistake similar to "fundamentally moral". It's not arguing about whether there's a ghostly detachable property called "evil" that's independent of any normal facts about a person's mind and history.