= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Don't Revere The Bearer Of Good Info - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (64)
EDIT: I agree with your conclusion, but...
(Checks Don Loeb reference.)
While, unsurprisingly, we end up adding to the same normality, I would not say that these folks have the same metaethics I do. Certainly Greene's paper title "The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality" was enough to tell me that he probably didn't have exactly the same metaethics and interpretation I did. I would not feel at all comfortable describing myself as a "moral irrealist" on the basis of what I've seen so far.
Drescher one-boxes on Newcomb's Problem, but doesn't seem to have invented quite the same decision theory I have.
I don't think Nick ever claimed to have invented the Simulation Argument - he would probably be quite willing to credit Moravec.
On many other things, I have tried to use standard terminology where I actually agree with standard theories, and provide a reference or two. Where I am knowingly being just a messenger, I do usually try to convey that. But you may be reading too much into certain similarities that also have important points of difference or further development.
EDIT2: I occasionally notice the problem you point to, and write a blog post telling people to read more textbooks. Probably this is not enough. I'll try to reach a higher standard in any canonicalized versions.
I think the biggest issue here is your tendency to not cite sources other than yourself, which is an immediate turn-off to academics. To an academic, it suggests the following questions (amongst others): If your ideas are so good, why hasn't anyone else thought of them? Doesn't anyone else have an opinion on this - do you have a response to their arguments? Are you actually doing work in your field without having read enough to cite those who agree or disagree with you?
(I know this isn't a new issue, but it seems it bears repeating.)
This point could count against any amateur philosopher.
What is more pertinent: why insist you are doing better than the professionals? You should assume you are making ,mistakes and reinvemtimg wheels.
Why not learn the standard jargon? You may not have the time or inclination to learn the whole subject, but the jargon is the most .valuable thing to learn, because it enables you to communicate with professinals who can help you. If you are able to admit to yourself that, as an amateur, you might need help.
There are some failure modes that arepart and parcel of being an amateur, and some further ones that take you into crank territory.
Other questions that are implicitly asked:
I took a look at Greene's dissertation when Roko started pushing it, but I don't think Greene's views are much like Eliezer's at all. Specifically he doesn't seem to emphasize what Eliezer calls the "subjectively objective" quality of morality, or the fact that people may be mistaken as to what their morality says. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I agree with the rest of the original post.
I agree about the difference of emphasis but I don't think they have a major substantive disagreement on those issues. You can check with Owain Evans, who knows him.
Greene doesn't really think it's horrible, just that people mistakenly think it's horrible and recoil from irrealism about XML 'rightness tags' on actions because they think it would mean that they should start robbing and murdering. Nick does acknowledge Moravec on his website now, after being informed about it (he wasn't aware before that).
Perhaps I shouldn't have covered both being a messenger and acknowledgment of related independent work in the same post.
In this case, I'd actually say email me first with a quickie description.
Roko exaggerates. It's only 377 pages and written in an accessible style.
It summarizes the ethical literature on moral realism, and takes the irrealist view that XML tags on actions don't exist, and that even if they did exist we wouldn't care about them. It then goes into the psychology literature (Greene does experimental philosophy, e.g. finding that people misinterpret utility as having diminishing marginal utility in contravention to experimental instructions), e.g. Haidt's work on social intuitionism, to explain why it is that we think there are these moral properties 'out there' when there aren't any. Lastly, he argues that we can get on with pursuing our concerns (reasoning about conflicts between our concerns, implications, instrumental questions, etc), but suggests that awareness of the absence of XML tags can help us to better understand and deal with those with differing moral views.
This explains a LOT.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/Greene-Baron-JBDM-01.pdf
Enjoy.
?
There is no objective truth about which actions are the right ones, no valuation inherent in the actions themselves. And even if there was, even if you could build a right-a-meter and check which actions are good, you won't care about what it says, since it's still you that draws the judgment.