chaosmosis comments on Rationality Quotes October 2012 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: MBlume 02 October 2012 06:50PM

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Comment author: chaosmosis 03 October 2012 02:21:57PM -2 points [-]

To put on my utilitarian hat for a moment, I would suggest that blaming someone for a genuine mistake is right inasmuch as it leads to better outcomes.

To wit, sometimes punishing genuine mistakes will correct behavior.

We should distinguish between the notion of blame insofar as it's useful as opposed to blame insofar as it suggests that there is something wrong with the person for making the initial decision. Don't confuse different issues, there's a difference between desirable metaethics and desirable societal norms.

What is this supposed to mean? Was there an implied syllogism that I didn't spot? Why did logic even enter the conversation?

It seems illogical to have a moral system which requires people to do something impossible.

Comment author: DaFranker 03 October 2012 02:29:10PM *  2 points [-]

My desirable metaethics contains a complete lack of the notion referred to as "blame". The closest it gets is rewards for things that encourage prevention of things that would be "blamed" under other metaethics, such as the one which I currently hold (there are lots of hard problems to solve before that desired metaethics can be made fully reflectively coherent).

It seems illogical to have a moral system which requires people to do something impossible.

That seems to be begging the question. You posit that these things are objectively impossible, but assert that there is no way to obtain objective truth, and no way to verify the impossibility of something.

Also, a moral system which requires for maximal morality that all minds be infinitely kind requires all minds to do something impossible, yet seems like an extremely logical moral system (if kindness is the only thing valued). You can have unbounded variables in moral systems. I see no error there.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2012 03:05:10PM -1 points [-]

It seems illogical to have a moral system which requires people to do something impossible.

Not illogical, just annoying and pointless.