thomblake comments on This Didn't Have To Happen - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 April 2009 07:07PM

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Comment author: thomblake 24 April 2009 05:39:18PM 1 point [-]

I'm interested in a system that allows a John Stuart Mill and an Anton LaVey to peacefully coexist without attempting to judge who is more 'objectively' moral. I wish to be able to choose my own terminal values without having to perfectly align them with every other agent. Morality and ethics are then the minimal framework of agreed rules that allows us all to pursue our own ends without all 'defecting' (the prisoner's dilemma is too simple to be a really representative model but is a useful analogy).

You're talking about 'politics', not 'ethics'. Politics is about working together, ethics is about what one has most reason to do or want. What the political rules should say and what I should do are not necessarily going to give me the same answers.

Comment author: mattnewport 24 April 2009 06:07:56PM 1 point [-]

I disagree with your definitions. You seem to be talking about normative ethics - what you 'should' do. I'm more interested in topics that might fall under meta-ethics, descriptive ethics and applied ethics. There is certainly cross-over with politics but there is a lot of other baggage that comes with the word politics that means it's not a word I find useful to talk about the kind of questions I'm interested in here.