Eugine_Nier comments on Morality Isn't Logical - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Wei_Dai 26 December 2012 11:08PM

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Comment author: Solvent 27 December 2012 10:38:43PM *  2 points [-]

Here's an old Eliezer quote on this:

4.5.2: Doesn't that screw up the whole concept of moral responsibility?

Honestly? Well, yeah. Moral responsibility doesn't exist as a physical object. Moral responsibility - the idea that choosing evil causes you to deserve pain - is fundamentally a human idea that we've all adopted for convenience's sake. (23).

The truth is, there is absolutely nothing you can do that will make you deserve pain. Saddam Hussein doesn't deserve so much as a stubbed toe. Pain is never a good thing, no matter who it happens to, even Adolf Hitler. Pain is bad; if it's ultimately meaningful, it's almost certainly as a negative goal. Nothing any human being can do will flip that sign from negative to positive.

So why do we throw people in jail? To discourage crime. Choosing evil doesn't make a person deserve anything wrong, but it makes ver targetable, so that if something bad has to happen to someone, it may as well happen to ver. Adolf Hitler, for example, is so targetable that we could shoot him on the off-chance that it would save someone a stubbed toe. There's never a point where we can morally take pleasure in someone else's pain. But human society doesn't require hatred to function - just law.

Besides which, my mind feels a lot cleaner now that I've totally renounced all hatred.

It's pretty hard to argue about this if our moral intuitions disagree. But at least, you should know that most people on LW disagree with you on this intuition.

EDIT: As ArisKatsaris points out, I don't actually have any source for the "most people on LW disagree with you" bit. I've always thought that not wanting harm to come to anyone as an instrumental value was a pretty obvious, standard part of utilitarianism, and 62% of LWers are consequentialist, according to the 2012 survey. The post "Policy Debates Should Not Appear One Sided" is fairly highly regarded, and it esposes a related view, that people don't deserve harm for their stupidity.

Also, what those people would prefer isn't nessecarily what our moral system should prefer- humans are petty and short-sighted.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 28 December 2012 11:12:33PM 1 point [-]

I've always thought that not wanting harm to come to anyone as an instrumental value was a pretty obvious, standard part of utilitarianism, and 62% of LWers are consequentialist, according to the 2012 survey.

What do you mean by "utilitarianism"? The word has two different common meanings around here: any type of consequentialism, and the specific type of consequentialism that uses "total happiness" as a utility function. This sentence appears to be designed to confuse the two meanings.

The post "Policy Debates Should Not Appear One Sided" is fairly highly regarded, and it esposes a related view, that people don't deserve harm for their stupidity.

That is most definitely not the main point of that post.

Comment author: Solvent 28 December 2012 11:47:36PM 0 points [-]

What do you mean by "utilitarianism"? The word has two different common meanings around here: any type of consequentialism, and the specific type of consequentialism that uses "total happiness" as a utility function. This sentence appears to be designed to confuse the two meanings.

Yeah, my mistake. I'd never run across any other versions of consequentialism apart from utilitarianism (except for Clippy, of course). I suppose caring only for yourself might count? But do you seriously think that the majority of those consequentialists aren't utilitarian?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 28 December 2012 11:58:55PM 1 point [-]

Well, even Eliezer's version of consequentialism isn't simple utilitarianism for starters.

Comment author: Solvent 29 December 2012 12:02:18AM 0 points [-]

It's a kind of utilitarianism. I'm including act utilitarianism and desire utilitarianism and preference utilitarianism and whatever in utilitarianism.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 29 December 2012 09:43:41PM 1 point [-]

Ok, what is your definition of "utilitarianism"?