orthonormal comments on The Urgent Meta-Ethics of Friendly Artificial Intelligence - Less Wrong

45 Post author: lukeprog 01 February 2011 02:15PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 13 February 2011 10:21:46PM 0 points [-]

My biggest problem with desirism in general is that it provides no reason for us to want to fulfill others' desires.

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Comment author: endoself 14 February 2011 05:12:27AM *  1 point [-]

Are you familiar with desirism? It says that we should want to fulfill others' desires, but, AFAI can tell, gives no reason why.

Comment author: lukeprog 14 February 2011 06:35:19AM 2 points [-]

No. This is not what desirism says.

Comment author: endoself 14 February 2011 07:27:50AM 0 points [-]

From your desirism FAQ:

Desirism claims that moral value exists as a relation between desires and states of affairs.

Desirism claims that desires themselves are the primary objects of moral evaluation.

Thus, morality is the practice of shaping malleable desires: promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and discouraging desires that tend to thwart other desires.

The moral thing to do is to shape my desires to fulfill others' desires, insofar as they are malleable. This is what I meant by "we should want to fulfill others' desires," though I acknowledge that a significant amount of precision and clarity was lost in the original statement. Is this all correct?

Comment author: lukeprog 14 February 2011 07:44:32AM 3 points [-]

The desirism FAQ needs updating, and is not a very clear presentation of the theory, I think.

One problem is that much of the theory is really just a linguistic proposal. That's true for all moral theories, but it can be difficult to separate the linguistic from the factual claims. I think Alonzo Fyfe and I are doing a better job of that in our podcast. The latest episode is The Claims of Desirism, Part 1.

Comment author: endoself 14 February 2011 07:49:16AM 0 points [-]

I will listen to that.

Comment author: lukeprog 14 February 2011 07:51:34AM 2 points [-]

Unfortunately, we're not making moral claims yet. In meta-ethics, there is just too much groundwork to lay down first. Kinda like how Eliezer took like like 200 posts to build up to talking about meta-ethics.

Comment author: orthonormal 14 February 2011 05:28:36AM 0 points [-]

Ah, oops. I wasn't familiar with it, and I misunderstood the sentence.

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