Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality. Please visit our About page for more information.

OrphanWilde comments on Many-worlds implies the future matters more - Less Wrong

-7 Post author: jkaufman 26 July 2012 12:09PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (46)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 26 July 2012 04:08:29PM -1 points [-]

You should be careful about rejecting a theory of the universe because its ethical ramifications in particular ethical systems don't add up to ethical normality.

Theoretically, I could construct an ethical system in which string theory implies that we should eat babies. (Trivially, add a moral axiom that "If string theory is true, utility is increased by eating babies.") This doesn't imply that I should reject string theory because it doesn't add up to normality in some ethical system. It's trivially easy in this case to see that the ethical system which no longer adds up to normality, not string theory.

If ethical normality can legitimately be used to reject propositions about the universe, then religious people who argue that God is necessary to morality are vindicated in believing that the existence of morality proves the existence of God; God's nonexistence doesn't add up to ethical normality.

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 26 July 2012 05:50:53PM 0 points [-]

You should be careful about rejecting a theory of the universe because its ethical ramifications in particular ethical systems don't add up to ethical normality.

Neither do I want to.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 27 July 2012 04:06:18AM 0 points [-]

I'm puzzled by your meaning, then.

You'll upvote anything that shows -what- doesn't add up to normality - any concept or idea, or a specific one? And are you discussing decision theory as opposed to ethical decisions?

Comment author: [deleted] 26 July 2012 04:15:34PM -1 points [-]

If ethical normality can legitimately be used to reject propositions about the universe, then religious people who argue that God is necessary to morality are vindicated in believing that the existence of morality proves the existence of God;

So you wouldn't agree to this conditional: if the reality of God is a necessary condition on morality, then this is good evidence for the reality of God? I think (and I think you think) the antecedent here is false, but that doesn't make the conditional false.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 26 July 2012 04:28:14PM *  0 points [-]

That conditional is faulty, which isn't the same as false. The correct conditional would be "If the reality of God is a necessary condition on morality, and morality exists, then this is good evidence for the reality of God." But it still doesn't have truth value, either true or false, because it's just a conditional, and one which, when you get down to the details and define morality and God, will almost always turn out to be a tautology. (I/e, morality being what God has decided is good, which turns the conditional into "If God, then God.")