Viliam_Bur comments on Is the orthogonality thesis at odds with moral realism? - Less Wrong

3 Post author: ChrisHallquist 05 November 2013 08:47PM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 06 November 2013 02:23:25PM *  7 points [-]

I thought that when humans and Clippy speak about morality, they speak about the same thing (assuming that they are not lying and not making mistakes).

The difference is in connotations. For humans, morality has a connotation "the thing that should be done". For Clippy, morality has a connotation "this weird stuff humans care about".

So, you could explain the concept of morality to Clippy, and then also explain that X is obviously moral. And Clippy would agree with you. It just wouldn't make Clippy any more likely to do X; the "should" emotion would not get across. The only result would be Clippy remembering that humans feel a desire to do X; and that information could be later used to create more paperclips.

Clippy's equivalent of "should" is connected to maximizing the number of paperclips. The fact that X is moral is about as much important for it as an existence of a specific paperclip is for us. "Sure, X is moral. I see. I have no use of this fact. Now stop bothering me, because I want to make another paperclip."

Comment author: Creutzer 06 November 2013 07:00:07PM 2 points [-]

Oh, yes. I was using "moral" the same way you used "should" here.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 06 November 2013 03:20:52PM 0 points [-]

So why do humans have different words for would fo it, and should do it?