sam0345 comments on Open Thread: September 2011 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Pavitra 03 September 2011 07:50PM

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Comment author: ArisKatsaris 05 September 2011 09:29:08PM 5 points [-]

Do you really not realize that every part of you that has evolved, every tiny little part, every little mechanism of your body which has a function and which has the potential to be harmed, evolved because it helped your ancestors to survive and reproduce and ultimately to produce you?

You keep saying things that are both true and utterly besides the point. You suffer from vast confusions of words.

It's cooked in by natural selection. But natural selection only cares about reproduction.

No, natural selection doesn't have a mind, and DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING.

We care. Natural selection made us to care. But natural selection itself doesn't give a damn. Thou Shalt Not Anthropomorphize Natural Selection.

Your instincts are what they are because they help you reproduce.

Again irrelevant.

Because natural selection doesn't care what you think, and natural selection made you.

Gravity also made me, since it held me and my ancestors on the planet, and gravity only cares about mass, by which argument harm must be anything that reduces my mass. Because gravity only cares about mass.

Your argument is nothing but a mishmashed jumble of anthropomorphisms, imaginary duties to the impersonal processes that created, and term confusions.

You're effectively saying two things: We should redefine "harm" to mean something different than people think when they talk about "harm", because natural selection intended "harm" to mean something else, and when our human intuitions come in conflict with natural selection's "intent" we must obediently bow to our creator's intent.

Well our creator was not just stupid, it was utterly brainless and purposeless and intentionless. So we ought to screw what natural selection thinks, because it DOES NOT THINK.