Vivi comments on Consolidated Nature of Morality Thread - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 April 2007 11:00PM

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Comment author: TimS 26 March 2012 12:46:52AM 2 points [-]

Over time, this caused morality to be biologically hardwired into the gene pool.

The sheer diversity of moral theories actually applied by some human society at some point in history makes this claim extremely difficult to accept.

It's likely that most moral positions are consistent with decision theory (i.e. Tit-for-Tat wins many iterated Prisoner's dilemma tournaments). But that doesn't require that morality be "baked in" by evolution. The generalized view of organisms as adaption-executors seems sufficient to explain why basic decision theory bears some resemblance to the relatively uncontroversial moral positions.

Comment author: Vivi 26 March 2012 02:17:48AM *  0 points [-]

I was unclear. I apologize. I misrepresented a general inclination to perform conventionally "good" acts as moral and ethical convention. Thank you for your scrutiny. I will ensure to accurately represent my views in the future. Also, "Dilemma" should be capitalized if "Prisoner's" is.