When a paperclip maximizer and a pencil maximizer do different things, they are not disagreeing about anything, they are just different optimization processes.
I don't get this. Different optimization processes disagree about what to optimize, no?
Different optimization processes disagree about what to optimize, no?
No. The paperclip maximizer believes that it makes no reasoning errors in striving to maximize paperclips, and the pencil maximizer agrees. And vice versa. And neither of them conceives of a property of agent-independent "to-be-optimized-ness", much less attributes such a property to anything.
Edit: Nor, for that matter, do ordinary moralists conceive of an agent-independent "to-be-optimized". "Should" always applies to an agent doing something, not to...
Today's post, Moral Error and Moral Disagreement was originally published on 10 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.