A funny argument for traditional morality

cousin_it

I just had a long conversation with my brother, a devout Christian. With my help he has outlined the following argument why it might be good for me to follow Christian deontology:

Many of my moral values arose from my upbringing, as opposed to biology. This is evidenced by the fact that biologically similar people living in different places and epochs have different ideas of what's right.
Therefore many of my values originally came from the society that raised me.
Society's values were strongly influenced by Christian values, and many of our core moral prohibitions are inherited from Christian tradition.
The world is full of people who may want to edit my values ever-so-slightly while I'm not looking, in order to further their own agenda.
Also my values may drift, and most drift is harmful from the perspective of my current values.
A good recipe for countering this insidious deterioration of values is to consciously pull them back toward their original source, as long as it's something unchanging, like a book.
That means editing my values to more closely match Christianity. QED.

What do you think?

I just had a long conversation with my brother, a devout Christian. With my help he has outlined the following argument why it might be good for me to follow Christian deontology:

Many of my moral values arose from my upbringing, as opposed to biology. This is evidenced by the fact that biologically similar people living in different places and epochs have different ideas of what's right.
Therefore many of my values originally came from the society that raised me.
Society's values were strongly influenced by Christian values, and many of our core moral prohibitions are inherited from Christian tradition.
The world is full of people who may want to edit my values ever-so-slightly while I'm not looking, in order to further their own agenda.
Also my values may drift, and most drift is harmful from the perspective of my current values.
A good recipe for countering this insidious deterioration of values is to consciously pull them back toward their original source, as long as it's something unchanging, like a book.
That means editing my values to more closely match Christianity. QED.

What do you think?

Here's another, unpolitical scenario about pulling back values

Consider a world where there are cosmic rays that can hit an agent's brain, but they home in on the part containing the utility function. Shielding from these rays is possible but expensive.

In this world, when an agent considers whether to invest in the expensive protection, it considers whether a version of it newly hit with a cosmic ray would remain loyal to the old version of it by keeping on maximizing the old utility function (with some weight) as well as the new cosmic ray begotten one.

Then, when a agent newly hit by a cosmic ray agent considers whether to remain loyal, it notices that if it doesn't, it's less likely to exist since it's predecessor would have invested in the protection, so it remains loyal.

This assumes that the new agent prefers to have existed, and it's not clear to me that people ordinarily have such a preference.

2cousin_it15y

Interesting, thanks! I can't formalize your scenario because I don't understand it completely, but it looks like a game theory problem that should yield an equilibrium in mixed strategies, not unconditional loyalty.

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A funny argument for traditional morality

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A funny argument for traditional morality

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