David_Gerard comments on Friendly to who? - Less Wrong

2 Post author: TimFreeman 16 April 2011 11:43AM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 17 April 2011 05:34:39PM *  1 point [-]

No, you've just explicitly clarified that you are in fact making an "A is a subset of B, therefore B is a subset of A" fallacy, with A=morality and B=signaling. Moralities being a subset of signaling (and I'm not saying it's a strict subset anyway, but a combination of practical game theory and signaling; I'd be unsurprised, of course, to find there was more) does not, in logic, imply that all signaling (e.g. racism, to use your example) is therefore a subset of morality. That's a simple logical fallacy, though the Latin name for it doesn't spring to mind. It's only not a fallacy if the two are identical or being asserted to be identical (or, for practical discussion, substantially identical), and I'm certainly not asserting that - there is plenty of signaling that is nothing to do with moralities.

Remember: if you find yourself making an assertion that someone else's statement that A is a subset of B therefore implies that B is a subset of A, you're doing it wrong, unless A is pretty much all of B (such that if you know something is in B, it's very likely to be in A). If you still think that in the case you're considering A⊂B => B⊂A, you should do the numbers.

Comment author: TimFreeman 18 April 2011 03:14:43AM 0 points [-]

I proposed abandoning the word "morality" because it's too muddled. You want to use it. I have repeatedly tried to guess what you mean by it, and you've claimed I'm wrong every time. Please define what you mean by "morality" if you wish to continue.