ArisKatsaris comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

29 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 March 2012 12:41AM

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Comment author: ArisKatsaris 10 January 2013 01:19:46PM 0 points [-]

because we can miscalculate an "ought" or anything else.

One way to miscalculate an "ought" is the same way that we can miscalculate an "is" -- e.g. lack of information, erroneous knowledge, false understanding of how to weigh data, etc.

And also, because people aren't perfectly self-aware, we can mistake mere habits or strongly-held preferences to be the outputs of our moral algorithm -- same way that e.g. a synaesthete might perceive the number 8 to be colored blue, even though there's no "blue" light frequency striking the optical nerve. But that sort of thing doesn't seem as a very deep philosophical problem to me.

Comment author: Peterdjones 10 January 2013 01:30:05PM -1 points [-]

We can correct miscalculations where we have an conscious epistemic grasp of how the calculation should work. If morality is a neural black box, we have no such grasp. Such a neural black box cannot be used to plug the is-ought gap, because it does not distinguish correct calculations from miscalculations.