hairyfigment comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 2 - Less Wrong

15 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 20 April 2012 07:38PM

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Comment author: Jadagul 22 April 2012 11:22:26PM 1 point [-]

You're...very certain of what I understand. And of the implications of that understanding.

More generally, you're correct that people don't have a lot of direct access to their moral intuitions. But I don't actually see any evidence for the proposition they should converge sufficiently other than a lot of handwaving about the fundamental psychological similarity of humankind, which is more-or-less true but probably not true enough. In contrast, I've seen lots of people with deeply, radically separated moral beliefs, enough so that it seems implausible that these all are attributable to computational error.

I'm not disputing that we share a lot of mental circuitry, or that we can basically understand each other. But we can understand without agreeing, and be similar without being the same.

As for the last bit--I don't want to argue definitions either. It's a stupid pastime. But to the extent Eliezer claims not to be a meta-ethical relativist he's doing it purely through a definitional argument.

Comment author: hairyfigment 24 April 2012 05:35:21PM -1 points [-]

In contrast, I've seen lots of people with deeply, radically separated moral beliefs, enough so that it seems implausible that these all are attributable to computational error.

Do you know anyone who never makes computational errors? If 'mistakes' happen at all, we would expect to see them in cases involving tribal loyalties. See von Neumann and those who trusted him on hidden variables.

Comment author: Jadagul 25 April 2012 02:37:40AM 0 points [-]

The claim wasn't that it happens too often to attribute to computation error, but that the types of differences seem unlikely to stem from computational errors.