Eugine_Nier comments on Our Phyg Is Not Exclusive Enough - Less Wrong

25 [deleted] 14 April 2012 09:08PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 April 2012 03:00:46AM 4 points [-]

Maybe there's something wrong with Eliezer's metaethics

Try actually applying it to some real life situations and you'll quickly discover the problems with it.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 April 2012 03:28:40AM 1 point [-]

such as?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 April 2012 03:42:17AM 11 points [-]

Well, for starters determining whether something is a preference or a bias is rather arbitrary in practice.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 April 2012 04:06:27AM 2 points [-]

I struggled with that myself, but then figured out a rather nice quantitative solution.

Eliezer's stuff doesn't say much about that topic, but that doesn't mean it fails at it.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 April 2012 05:04:03AM 3 points [-]

I don't think your solution actually resolves things since you still need to figure out what weights to assign to each of your biases/values.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 April 2012 06:18:03AM 1 point [-]

You mean that it's not something that I could use to write an explicit utility function? Of course.

Beyond that, whatever weight all my various concerns have is handled by built-in algorithms. I just have to do the right thing.

Comment author: orthonormal 16 April 2012 04:56:05PM *  1 point [-]

There's a difference between a metaethics and an ethical theory.

The metaethics sequence is supposed to help dissolve the false dichotomy "either there's a metaphysical, human-independent Source Of Morality, or else the nihilists/moral relativists are right". It's not immediately supposed to solve "So, should we push a fat man off the bridge to stop a runaway trolley before it runs over five people?"

For the second question, we'd want to add an Ethics Sequence (in my opinion, Yvain's Consquentialism FAQ lays some good groundwork for one).