Vladimir_Nesov comments on Bioconservative and biomoderate singularitarian positions - Less Wrong

10 [deleted] 02 June 2009 01:19PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (36)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 June 2009 03:04:44PM *  0 points [-]

(Disambiguation attempt:) A correct moral position is e.g. one not leading to confusion about moral content, such as belief that eating babies is a human terminal value.

It's strange to me that you ask this question. Since you moved on from objective morality, I hope you didn't turn into a kind of moral relativist, in particular not accepting that one can be morally wrong.

Comment deleted 02 June 2009 11:00:42PM *  [-]
Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 June 2009 11:10:01PM *  0 points [-]

That's preference, what you can mention, or at least use. The morality of which one can be mistaken runs deeper, and at least partially can be revealed by the right moral arguments: after hearing such arguments, you change your preference, either establishing it where there was none or reversing it. After the change, you see your previous position as having been mistaken, and it's much less plausible to encounter another argument that would move your conclusion back. If I have the right model of a person, I can assert that he is morally mistaken in this sense.

Note that this notion of moral mistake doesn't require there to be an argument that would actually convince that person in a reasonable time, or for there to be no argument that would launch the person down a moral death spiral that would obliterate one's humane morality. Updating preferences on considering new arguments, or on new experience, are tools intended to show the shape of the concept that I'm trying to communicate.

Comment deleted 02 June 2009 11:20:33PM *  [-]
Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 June 2009 11:28:31PM *  0 points [-]

I'm not talking about breaking one's head with a hammer, there are many subtle arguments that you'd recognize as enlightening, propagating preference from where it's obvious to situations that you never connected to that preference, or evoking emotional response where you didn't expect one. As I said, there obviously are changes that can't be considered positive, or that are just arbitrary reversals, but there are also changes that you can intellectually recognize as improvements.

Comment deleted 04 June 2009 12:54:06PM [-]
Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 June 2009 01:56:43PM 1 point [-]

For some examples of judgments about changes being positive or negative, take a look at Which Parts Are "Me"?. You can look forward to changes in yourself, including the changes in your emotional reactions in response to specific situations, that figure into your preference. When you are aware of such preferred changes, but they are still not implemented, that's akrasia.

Now there are changes that only become apparent when you consider an external argument. Of course, it is you who considers the argument and decides what conclusion to draw from it, but the argument can come from elsewhere. For analogy, you may be easily able to check a solution to an equation, while unable to find it yourself.

The necessity for external moral arguments comes from you not being logically omniscient, their purpose is not in changing your preference directly.

Comment author: Z_M_Davis 02 June 2009 04:56:37PM 1 point [-]

Eating babies is clearly not a terminal value for the vast majority of humans, but if there's someone out there who really likes eating babies, then it is not at all clear to me in what sense we can say that's we're right and she's wrong. You assert that moral progress follows from human nature. I ask, how do you know? What experiment falsified the slavery-is-right hypothesis? What sort of evidence would make you abandon your morality?

Comment author: Psychohistorian 02 June 2009 06:08:21PM 0 points [-]

A correct moral position is e.g. one not leading to confusion about moral content, such as belief that eating babies is a human terminal value.

Confusion is a property of the mind. Something that is defined as correct by not causing confusion is thus necessarily subjective. If people (possibly only a person) were different, and it did cause confusion, it would no longer be correct.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 June 2009 06:24:51PM 0 points [-]

Correctness is a property of the mind as well. And it's not a definition, it's an attempt for disambiguation, with an example. How many disclaimers do I need?

Comment author: Annoyance 02 June 2009 06:29:24PM -1 points [-]

Correctness is not a property of minds. It's potentially a property of conclusions, although this cannot be generally known. It's only usefully a property of arguments considered as a whole.

Comment author: timtyler 02 June 2009 05:44:14PM 0 points [-]

Your definition seems strange and counter-intuitive - since surely this leads to all kinds of "evil" moral positions being described as being "correct".