RichardKennaway comments on Ontological Crisis in Humans - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Wei_Dai 18 December 2012 05:32PM

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Tags: ontology nihilism ai philosophy morality

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 19 December 2012 12:35:31PM *  4 points [-]

To fully confront the ontological crisis that we face

What ontological crisis is that? The rest of the article is written in general terms, but this phrase suggests you have a specific one in mind, but without actually being specific. Is there some ontological crisis that you are facing, that moved this article?

Personally, learning that apples are made of atoms doesn't give me any difficulty in eating them.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 19 December 2012 08:36:17PM *  2 points [-]

Is there some ontological crisis that you are facing, that moved this article?

I explained this in the post:

I recently realized that a couple of problems that I've been thinking over (the nature of selfishness and the nature of pain/pleasure/suffering/happiness) can be considered instances of ontological crises in humans (although I'm not so sure we necessarily have the cognitive algorithms to solve them). I started thinking in this direction after writing this comment: [...]

If you're asking whether it's something more personal, the answer is no, I've always been interested in moral philosophy and this just part of my continuing investigations.

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