CarlShulman comments on Don't Revere The Bearer Of Good Info - Less Wrong

82 Post author: CarlShulman 21 March 2009 11:22PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 March 2009 11:57:30PM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: CarlShulman 22 March 2009 12:04:28AM *  3 points [-]

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.