Why didn't people (apparently?) understand the metaethics sequence?

ChrisHallquist

There seems to be a widespread impression that the metaethics sequence was not very successful as an explanation of Eliezer Yudkowsky's views. It even says so on the wiki. And frankly, I'm puzzled by this... hence the "apparently" in this post's title. When I read the metaethics sequence, it seemed to make perfect sense to me. I can think of a couple things that may have made me different from the average OB/LW reader in this regard:

I read Three Worlds Collide before doing my systematic read-through of the sequences.
I have a background in academic philosophy, so I had a similar thought to Richard Chapell's linking of Eliezer's metaethics to rigid designators independently of Richard.

Reading the comments on the metaethics sequence, though, hasn't enlightened me about what exactly people had a problem with, aside from a lot of arguing about definitions over whether Eliezer counts as a relativist.

What's going on here? I ask mainly because I'm thinking of trying to write a post (or sequence?) explaining the metaethics sequence, and I'm wondering what points I should address, what issues I should look out for, etc.

I read Three Worlds Collide before doing my systematic read-through of the sequences.
I have a background in academic philosophy, so I had a similar thought to Richard Chapell's linking of Eliezer's metaethics to rigid designators independently of Richard.

I raise the analogy because it seems an obvious one to me, so I don't see where the confusion is.

Your analysis clearly describes some of my understanding of what EY says. I use "yummy" as a go to analogy for morality as well. But, EY also seems to be making a universalist argument, as least for "normal" humans. Because he talks about abstract computation, leaving particular brains behind, it's just unclear to me whether he's a subjectivist or a universalist.

The "no universally compelling argument" applies to Clippy versus us, but is there also no universally compelling argument with all of "us" as well?

"Universalist" and "Subjectivist" aren't opposed or conflicting terms. "Subjective" simply says that moral statements are really statements about the attitudes or opinions of people (or something else with a mind). The opposing term is "objective". "Universalist" and "relativist" are on a different dimension from subjective and objective. Universal vs. relative is about how variable or not variable morality is.

You could have a metaethical theory that morality is both objective and relative. For e... (read more)

-2Rob Bensinger13y

If you have in mind 'human universals' when you say 'universality', that's easily patched. Morality is like preferring ice cream in general, rather than like preferring vanilla ice cream. Just about every human likes ice cream. [...] 1. The brain is a computer, hence it runs 'abstract computations'. This is true in essentially the same sense that all piles of five objects are instantiating the same abstract 'fiveness'. If it's mysterious in the case of human morality, it's not only equally mysterious in the case of all recurrent physical processes; it's equally mysterious in the case of all recurrent physical anythings. 2. Some philosophers would say that brain computations are both subjective and objective -- metaphysically subjective, because they involve our mental lives, but epistemically objective, because they can be discovered and verified empirically. For physicalists, however, 'metaphysical subjectivity' is not necessarily a joint-carving concept. And it may be possible for a non-sentient AI to calculate our moral algorithm. So there probably isn't any interesting sense in which morality is subjective, except maybe the sense in which everything computed by an agent is 'subjective'. 3. I don't know anymore what you mean by 'universalism'. [...] There are universally compelling arguments for all adolescent or adult humans of sound mind. (And many pre-adolescent humans, and many humans of unsound mind.)

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Why didn't people (apparently?) understand the metaethics sequence?

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Why didn't people (apparently?) understand the metaethics sequence?

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