Upvoted for making an interesting general point. Downvoted for cartoonish history that reads like it's about some weird parallel universe. (A point by point criticism would require a comment of almost the same length, but if someone seriously disputes my claim, I can list half a dozen or so particularly bizarre claims.)
Well, where should I start? A few examples:
The Roman Empire reached its maximum extent under Trajan circa 100AD. (And even that was a fairly small increase relative to a century earlier under Augustus.) Signs of crisis started appearing only towards the end of the 2nd century, and Christianity started being officially tolerated only in the early 4th century. How these centuries of non-expansion before Christianity entered the political stage can be reconciled with the theory from the article is beyond me.
There is clear evidence that the fall of the Roman empire occasioned a huge fall in living standards throughout the former Empire, including its provinces that it supposedly only pillaged and exploited. (See The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins for a good recent overview.)
Ascribing the decline in masculinity to some mysterious "reprogramming" that is narrated in passive voice strikes as me as bizarrely incoherent.
Large cities are not a modern invention. In the largest cities of the ancient world, enormous numbers of men (certainly on the order of hundreds of thousands) lived packed together much more tightly than in modern cities.
I think there is some evidence morality improved, one as a thought experiment, another as a real, factual evidence.
The thought experiment is considering that you would take someone from now, and teleport him back to another period of history (say the Dark Ages, or the Roman Empire), and in the other way, take someone from those time and teleport him to now. In both cases the person will be shocked, and need time to adapt. But I do think there will be a significant difference : the guy from now teleported to the Dark Ages will be horrified that they use torture and horrible punishments, the one teleported to the Roman Empire will be horrified about gladiator games and slavery. The guy from the past teleported to now will not be horrified by the lack of them, but surprised that we manage to do without them : how can you maintain civil peace and order without cruel punishments ? How can you feed people without slaves ? How can you entertain people without gladiators ? That's a fundamental point to me : many things which are unethical now were accepted in the past not because they were valued for themselves, but because they were perceived as the only solution to a worse problem. The s...
Traveler from the past: "What?! You let filthy lesser races marry your children? Gays aren't stoned in the streets? Why is that woman in a position of authority over men? Why is THAT woman not ashamed to be a single mother? Society has collapsed into a disgusting moral cesspool!"
If you want to see how people from the past might look at our "moral progress", ask your racist grandma.
If you believe this, then in the comments below, please describe a scenario that could have happened, in which we would today believe that the values people had hundreds of years ago were superior to the values they have today. Not a scenario in which some conservative sub-group could believe this; but a scenario in which society as a whole could believe it, and keep on believing it for a hundred years, without changing their values.
And yet for the majority of history most people believed that values were decaying. See, for example, the ancient Greek notion of the Ages of Man, the related Hindu concept of the Four Yugas, or the quote at the top of this article.
Our values do not change as a result of reflection
Values, like biology and culture, evolve. That doesn't mean getting "better" over time. It means becoming more adaptive.
Take any moral advance you like. Study its history, and you'll find people adopted it when it became economically advantageous to those in power do so.
The arguments here seem completely orthogonal to the heading they are supposed to support. In fact that seems to be representative of the whole post.
Yes, values are unstable over time. Go far enough back and there will not even be creatures with something that can be described as 'values'. The same could be expected if humanity somehow managed to evolve towards the Malthusian equilibrium that current evolutionary payoffs would reward. Our current values are completely unstable.
CEV isn't anything to do with predicting what humans would value in the future. It is about capturing the values we have right now and adjusting them only according to how we would want them to be adjusted if we had the time, power and resources to think it through. That doesn't mean simulating the future it means taking a closer look at inconsistencies and competing desires and...
I like the point that human values seem to be changing faster lately, so it doesn't look like they're approaching equilibrium. But the post seems to be making huge leaps of logic.
The Roman Empire was not an empire; it was a forest fire. It burned its way out from Italy and across the continent, using up each new land that it came to, stripping it of resources and funneling them to Rome. When it burned its way out until pillaging the new area on its perimeter (increasing as R) could no longer support the area in its interior (increasing as R squared), it burned out and died.
That sounds different from the standard story about Rome. Why do you believe that?
This theory has obvious intended moral lessons; I'd actually be very curious as to why you perceive it as morally-neutral. Is is that you see the primary lesson as so obvious ("pillaging isn't a sustainable economy") that it doesn't appear to be didactic? I wouldn't be surprised if the lessons were the whole point of the theory; I've heard it used before as an analogy to criticize the Soviet Union's political structure and the United States' economic structure (by two different people, naturally).
Now that I think about it, since entire schools of morality can be roughly summarized as "morals are the codes of conduct that make your civilization work well", I doubt it's even possible to come up with a theory explaining a civilization's collapse without that theory inherently expressing a moral lesson. Even "external factors destroyed it" could be interpreted as "you should be more paranoid than they were about dangerous external factors".
"Slaves, obey your masters" was an economic necessity. (China had discovered Taoism and Buddhism centuries earlier.)
Confucianism would have been more appropriate.
The Civil War began just after mechanical reapers and other inventions began to make slavery uneconomical for more and more people, until they reached the tipping point at which the people with these devices could use anti-slavery as a weapon against their competitors.
What about countries like Mexico, that both got rid of slavery before the technology you mention, and without using it much as a piece in power struggles? Some account of the widespread abolition of slavery might be written without reference to human values, but this isn't it and I don't know what would be.
Slavery was abolished in England in 1772, in Pennsylvania in 1780, in Canada in 1793 (Upper) and 1803 (Lower), and throughout the British Empire in 1833. The large, politically active advocacy groups against it in the English-speaking world were predominantly religious — Quakers and evangelicals — although secular philosophers such as Mill were opponents of slavery as well.
Slavery in Latin America started downhill when Chile declared no more children would be born slaves ("freedom of wombs") in 1811. Revolutionary France abolished slavery in its New World colonies in 1793-1795, after the Haitian slave uprising of 1791. However, slavery was reestablished by Napoleon; and had to be abolished again in 1848.
Notably, the "cold places abolished slavery first because they didn't have long growing seasons" idea falls flat — most of the tropical New World colonies had abolished slavery well before the U.S. did in 1865.
Take any moral advance you like. Study its history, and you'll find people adopted it when it became economically advantageous to those in power do so.
In other words, to falsify your entire theory, all I have to do is find an example where a moral choice came at considerable economic cost?
That doesn't sound too hard.
Values converge and reach equilbrium in the same way that evolution converges and reaches equilbrium: Not at all.
Evolution constantly converges toward equilibrium. This is why when constructing evolutionary algorithms preventing premature convergence is such a big deal. In nature the main thing preventing convergence to a rather boring equilibrium is changing environmental conditions - followed by Fisherian runaway, of course.
I am confused.
You seem to be simultaneously arguing that 1) there's no objective way to define "better values", so we can't assert that our present values are any better than our past values, and 2) moral advances bring us farther from "equilibrium", so equilibrium isn't the right way to define better values.
But implicit in the second statement is the assumption that there are "better values", and "moral advances"!
Is the present more morally advanced than the past, or not? Were slavery and the end of masculinity (?...
Phil, in your opinion does the argument you offered for the thesis "There can be no evidence that morality has improved" likewise prove (mutatis mutandis) that there can be no evidence that knowledge can be improved? [EDIT, a few days later: of course I meant "has improved" at the end there. Sorry.]
It looks to me as if it should work as well for that as for your actual thesis: I cannot envisage a scenario in which we would believe that the opinions held by people in the past were better than our present opinions, and stably maintain tha...
If you have such a strong belief, that must mean you have evidence for it. That must mean you had some hypothesis, and the evidence could have gone either way; and the evidence went in such a way that it supported your hypothesis.
Not for particularly strong beliefs, but consider the case of judging certain pieces of art better (for your personal appreciation). What kind of evidence counts? Personal hunch seems to be the best we have.
When people talk about values getting better I think they mean that they have some core values and "improving" means they have a more accurate picture of what derivative values should be in order to maximize those core values.
Morality has been getting better over time, right?
I don't understand the claim.
If you believe this, then in the comments below, please describe a scenario that could have happened, in which we would today believe that the values people had hundreds of years ago were superior to the values they have today.
It's not uncommon for societies to believe others more moral, particularly their ancestors, but not always. There is a whole noble savage genre. My first piece of evidence is that my society thinks it has improved on the past; I expect to find such...
I think there's good evidence against moral progress. Take any example somebody would give of moral progress and you can generally find another society or another era where the same, or at least similar, values were held. The appropriate question for somebody who believes in moral progress is, I think, What is the moral equivalent of a Saturn V rocket or a 747? Technological progress is obvious. I can point to any number of devices we have now that have absolutely no equivalent in history. Arguing that, say, animal welfare in the West is a genuine moral ad...
Is there any reason to think this process will converge, rather than diverge more and more, as it has for all of history? If there is, it has not been articulated.
Future creatures will probably have bigger genomes, bigger sef-descriptions, and so bigger moralities - assuming, of course, that their morality refers to themselves. There might be practical limits on creature size - but these are probably large, leaving a lot of space for evolution in the mean time.
The idea that values will freeze arises out of an analysis of self-improving systems, that ...
(I don't even know how to express coherently the idea that "values are getting better".)
Do you grant that I can have reflective preferences about the way my values should change in the future? That is, that I would not want my values to change in certain ways (e.g. by the intervention of an antagonist) but would want my values to change in other ways (e.g. if I think for a long time and decide that I value something different).
If so it seems clear that I can have preferences over ways my values could have changed in past, and can therefore sa...
I think there are two steps to morality engineering, either of which can fail:
You say neither has happened; I disagree on both, but I'll limit this post to the second question on "binding." I use the following definitions - they may not be correct or universal, but they should be internally consistent:
I think there are two steps to morality engineering, either of which can fail:
You say neither has happened; I disagree on both, but I'll limit this post to the second question on "binding." I use the following definitions - they may not be correct or universal, but they should be internally consistent:
CEV isn't just about your values changing by self-reflection. It's about your values changing as you become the person you wish you were. Humanity has reached the peak for self-reflection long ago (though I believe it still advances a little due to a growing understanding of the universe), but we have done nothing about human nature.
Your evidence against CEV is flawed, though you still correctly point out the lack of evidence for it. I doubt we would all end up in the same place, and it's likely that one person could end up in two very different places jus...
As you've described it, Adaptiveness is very economic. But there are lots of social changes that are hard to explain economically. For example, the expansion of political inclusiveness in the West (Monarchy -> Limited Voting Rights -> Universal Manhood Suffrage -> Universal Suffrage).
And there is a plausible economic story for the creation of Jim Crow (rich whites trying to prevent poor whites from forming a political coalition with poor blacks). But I'm unpersuaded that there's a compelling economic explanation for the end of Jim Crow.
Coherent extrapolated volition (CEV) asks what humans would want, if they knew more - if their values reached reflective equilibrium. (I don't want to deal with the problems of whether there are "human values" today; for the moment I'll consider the more-plausible idea that a single human who lived forever could get smarter and closer to reflective equilibrium over time.)
This is appealing because it seems compatible with moral progress (see e.g., Muehlhauser & Helm, "The singularity and machine ethics", in press). Morality has been getting better over time, right? And that's because we're getting smarter, and closer to reflective equilibrium as we revise our values in light of our increased understanding, right?
This view makes three claims:
There can be no evidence for the first claim, and the evidence is against the second two claims.
There can be no evidence that morality has improved
Intuitively, we feel that morality has definitely improved over time. We are so much better than those 17th-century barbarians who baited bears!
If you have such a strong belief, that must mean you have evidence for it. That must mean you had some hypothesis, and the evidence could have gone either way; and the evidence went in such a way that it supported your hypothesis.
If you believe this, then in the comments below, please describe a scenario that could have happened, in which we would today believe that the values people had hundreds of years ago were superior to the values they have today. Not a scenario in which some conservative sub-group could believe this; but a scenario in which society as a whole could believe it, and keep on believing it for a hundred years, without changing their values.
We can show that values have changed. But we can have no evidence that that change is towards better values, whatever that means, rather than a value-neutral drift. (I don't even know how to express coherently the idea that "values are getting better".)
If society agreed that another set of values were superior, they would adopt those values. In fact, they would already have those values, prior to agreeing. There can be no observed event supporting the hypothesis that morals have improved. No matter how much you feel that they have improved, you cannot have empirical evidence, not even in principle.
Our values do not change as a result of reflection
Values, like biology and culture, evolve. That doesn't mean getting "better" over time. It means becoming more adaptive.
Take any moral advance you like. Study its history, and you'll find people adopted it when it became economically advantageous to those in power do so.
Christianity
Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you. Turn the other cheek. Slaves, obey your masters.
The Roman Empire was not an empire; it was a forest fire. It burned its way out from Italy and across the continent, using up each new land that it came to, stripping it of resources and funneling them to Rome. When it burned its way out until pillaging the new area on its perimeter (increasing as R) could no longer support the area in its interior (increasing as R squared), it burned out and died. It was not a sustainable economic model. It relied on exploiting conquered peoples, and on suppressing them with armies built from the wealth acquired by conquering other people. (Citation needed. I'm not an expert on ancient Rome.)
With Christianity, you could exploit people without needing large armies to keep them in line. Christianity was the technology that saved the eastern half of the Roman Empire and allowed its survival into the high middle ages; and that enabled the rise of Western European nations. "Slaves, obey your masters" was an economic necessity. (China had discovered Taoism and Buddhism centuries earlier.)
How did Christianity bring us closer to reflective equilibrium? It didn't. It brought us WAY out of reflective equilibrium. The virtues expressed in the Iliad are pretty close to a reflective equilibrium. When we introduced all this stuff about loving your enemy, the cognitive dissonance in Western ethics went up by orders of magnitude. Even today, we've never gotten near to the level of equilibrium we had pre-Christianity. Christianity, as promoted by Jesus, is pacifist, communist, non-materialist, unpatriotic, and anti-family.
Masculinity
Consider an even more significant moral advance: The de-masculinization of the human race. Until a few centuries ago, men were encouraged to fight each other pretty much as often as possible. Excellence in combat was the single greatest virtue in most societies throughout all of history until the 20th century. Beating up weaker boys not only wasn't bad; it was a kind of civic duty.
The destructive technology of the 19th and especially the 20th centuries required changes. Armed conflict was no longer a cost-effective way to make money or resolve disputes. Society had to be reprogrammed. And as population density continued to rise, countries needed to be able to keep a million men in a single city without them turning on each other like rats in a cage.
Again, how did this bring us closer to an equilibrium? It didn't, which is why confused men sometimes feel the need to have steam lodges and drum circles in the woods.
Slavery
Or take slavery. Was the abolition of slavery in the US the result of reflective equilibrium? The virtuous northern US, which happened to have a lot of textile mills and other industry requiring skilled labor, realized the monstrosity of the institution of slavery, which also happened to give the Southern states enough votes in the House of Representatives to implement tariffs and other economic laws that favored the production of raw materials over the manufacture of goods.
But, you say, the North also had plenty of farmers! Yet these good Presbyterians were never tempted to have their apple orchards or their cranberry bogs tended by slaves.
That's because the northern US is cold. It has a short growing season. It's more economical to hire workers when you need them, than to keep slaves year-round.
The Civil War began just after mechanical reapers and other inventions began to make slavery uneconomical for more and more people, until they reached the tipping point at which the people with these devices could use anti-slavery as a weapon against their competitors. If the War had been delayed fifteen years, the South would have been inundated with labor-saving farm devices that made keeping slaves cost more than it was worth, and would have suddenly seen the error of their ways and renounced slavery on their own. And the North would have missed an opportunity to achieve hegemony and the high moral ground at the same time.
Values shift further from, not closer to, equilibrium over time
The world is not in equilibrium, and hopefully never will be. The trend, historically, has been for cultural change to accelerate, bringing us farther from, not closer to, equilibrium. (This trend may be reversing in the last several decades, a point which would require many additional posts to explore.)
Culture is the sort of thing that you can't predict, you can only simulate. The only way to see how the world is going to develop is to wait for it to develop.
You may think that a super-intelligent AI can simulate this much, much faster than humans can. And you would be right. But the super-intelligent AI is part of the culture - you could say it is the culture - once it exists. In the process of trying to reach reflective equilibrium, it will learn new things, and discover new possibilities, which will require it to re-evaluate all prior beliefs, taking it farther from, not closer to, equilibrium. Is there any reason to think this process will converge, rather than diverge more and more, as it has for all of history? If there is, it has not been articulated.
Values converge and reach equilbrium in the same way that evolution converges and reaches equilbrium: Not at all.