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DarthImperius comments on Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013 - Less Wrong
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This is an extraordinary claim by Eliezer Yudkowsky that progress is a ratchet that moves in only one direction. I wonder what, say, the native Americans circa 1850 thought about Western notions of progress? If you equate "power" with "progress" this claim is somewhat believable, but if you're also trying to morally characterize the arc of history then it sounds like you've descended into progressive cultism and fanaticism.
So, now replying knowing your context, this actually came up in discussion with Eliezer at the dinner after his talk at MIT. The most agreed upon counterexample was more restrictive drug laws. But if one interprets Eliezer's statement as being slightly more poetic and allowing that occasional slips do occur but that the general trend is uni-directional, that looks much more plausible. And the opinion of the general American population in 1850 in many ways doesn't enter into that: most of that population took for granted factually incorrect statements about the universe that we can confidently say are wrong (e.g. not just religious belief but belief in a literal global flood and many other aspects of the Abrahamic religions which are demonstrably false).
What is the example?
that restrictive laws go against the Enlightenment? or that Prohibition was reversed and people are expecting other drug laws to be reversed?
The idea was that in general, more restrictive drugs laws, which became more common in the 20th century, were a step backwards.
A step backwards by what metric?
Without a metric, how is this any different from saying that the fall of monarchies in the 20th century is a step backwards?
You were responding to DI, who asked about Native Americans of 1850. Like those of today, they would probably applaud restrictions on alcohol and condemn restrictions on their own intoxicants substances. A very simple, first approximation theory of prohibition is that the West conquered the world and restricted intoxicants to its favorite. It was too late to ban coffee and cigarettes (and maybe stimulants are held to different standards), but it banned other drugs as soon as it noticed them.
Sure, people in 1850 had lots of false beliefs. Which ones are relevant to drugs?
That wasn't the point of the drug example. The point of the drug example was that Eliezer agrees that morality hasn't gone in an absolute one way direction.
Fine, but by making "less factually incorrect statements about the universe" your measure of the good, you've essentially assumed what you're trying to show -- the superiority of Enlightenment-based notions of progress.
Not really. Someone can have a detailed and correct understanding of the universe and not have that impact there morals. What's relevant here is that some of those aspects directly inform morals. We know now that an Abrahamic deity is extremely unlikely or for that matter most other classical deity notions. Thus, morals, values or general deontological rules based on divine revelation are not by themselves worth looking at. Similarly, at a meta-level we know that when people do discuss issues where morality disagrees to pay less attention to arguments based off of religious texts.
Did you mean to make this as a reply to another comment or was "This" meant to link somewhere?
Apologies, my reply didn't work correctly. I was referring to his comment at this thread: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
"The ratchet of progress turns unpredictably, but it doesn't turn backward."