I agree that EY would say both those things. I did not mean to contradict either in my comment.
A sufficiently sophisticated paperclip maximizer would agree that cooperation is a Good Move, in that it can be used to increase the rate of paperclip production. I agree that cooperation is a Good Move in roughly the same way.
That is part of what I was trying to convey with the word 'inherently'. The other part is that I think EY would say that humans do value some forms of cooperation, such as friendship, inherently, in addition to their instrumental value. I am, however, a bit less confident of that than of the things I have said about EY's metaethical views.
Most variants of h-morality inherently value those things. Many other moralities also value those things. That does not make them objectively better than their absence. Note that the presence of values in a specified morality is a factual question, not a moral one.
Whether or not h-morality h-should value cooperation and friendship inherently is a null question. H-moralities h-should be whatever they are, by definition. Whether or not h-morality o-should do so is a question that requires understanding o-morality to answer.
Today's post, The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary? was originally published on 14 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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