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beoShaffer comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (July 2012) - Less Wrong
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Hi All,
I'm Will Crouch. Other than one other, this is my first comment on LW. However, I know and respect many people within the LW community.
I'm a DPhil student in moral philosophy at Oxford, though I'm currently visiting Princeton. I work on moral uncertainty: on whether one can apply expected utility theory in cases where one is uncertain about what is of value, or what one one ought to do. It's difficult to do so, but I argue that you can.
I got to know people in the LW community because I co-founded two organisations, Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours, dedicated to the idea of effective altruism: that is, using one's marginal resources in whatever way the evidence supports as doing the most good. A lot of LW members support the aims of these organisations.
I woudn't call myself a 'rationalist' without knowing a lot more about what that means. I do think that Bayesian epistemology is the best we've got, and that rational preferences should conform to the von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms (though I'm uncertain - there are quite a lot of difficulties for that view). I think that total hedonistic utilitarianism is the most plausible moral theory, but I'm extremely uncertain in that conclusion, partly on the basis that most moral philosophers and other people in the world disagree with me. I think that the more important question is what credence distribution one ought to have across moral theories, and how one ought to act given that credence distribution, rather than what moral theory one 'adheres' to (whatever that means).
Hi Will,
I think most LWer's would agree that; "Anyone who tries to practice rationality as defined on Less Wrong." is a passible description of what we mean by 'rationalist'.
Thanks for that. I guess that means I'm not a rationalist! I try my best to practice (1). But I only contingently practice (2). Even if I didn't care one jot about increasing happiness and decreasing suffering in the world, then I think I still ought to increase happiness and decrease suffering. I.e. I do what I do not because it's what I happen to value, but because I think it's objectively valuable (and if you value something else, like promoting suffering, then I think you're mistaken!) That is, I'm a moral realist. Whereas the definition given in Eliezer's post suggests that being a rationalist presupposes moral anti-realism. When I talk with other LW-ers, this often seems to be a point of disagreement, so I hope I'm not just being pedantic!
Not at all. (Eliezer is a sort of moral realist). It would be weird if you said "I'm a moral realist, but I don't value things that I know are objectively valuable".
It doesn't really matter whether you're a moral realist or not - instrumental rationality is about achieving your goals, whether they're good goals or not. Just like math lets you crunch numbers, whether they're real statistics or made up. But believing you shouldn't make up statistics doesn't therefore mean you don't do math.
Could you provide a link to a blog post or essay where Eliezer endorses moral realism? Thanks!
Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps notes that 'right' is the same sort of thing as 'prime' - it refers to a particular abstraction that is independent of anyone's say-so.
Though Eliezer is also a sort of moral subjectivist; if we were built differently, we would be using the word 'right' to refer to a different abstraction.
Really, this is just shoehorning Eliezer's views into philosophical debates that he isn't involved in.
"It doesn't really matter whether you're a moral realist or not - instrumental rationality is about achieving your goals, whether they're good goals or not."
It seems to me that moral realism is an epistemic claim - it is a statement about how the world is - or could be - and that is definitely a matter that impinges on rationality.
This seems to be similar to Eliezer's beliefs. Relevant quote from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
I don't think that's what Harry is saying there. Your quote from HPMOR seems to me to be more about the recognition that moral considerations are only one aspect of a decision-making process (in humans, anyway), and that just because that is true doesn't mean that moral considerations won't have an effect.