Comment on Ritual 2012: A Moment of Darkness

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:17:31 GMT

It comes down to "I value this human over that other human" being a part of your utility function, f(this.human) > f(that.human). [Syntactical overloading for comedic relief] A bias is something affecting your cognition - how you process information, not what actions you choose based upon that processing. While you can say "your values are biased towards X", that is using the term in a different than the usual LW context.

In particular, I doubt you'll find more than 1 in a million humans who would not value some close relative's / friend's / known person's life over a randomly picked human life ("It could be anything! It could even be another boat!").

You have here a major, major part of the utility function of a majority of humans (throughout history! in-group > out-group), yet you persist on calling that an evil bias. Why, because it does not fit with what the "standard human values" should be? What god intended? Or is there no religious element to your position at all? If so, please clarify.

You realize that most humans value eating meat, right? Best pick up that habit, no? ;)

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