mtraven comments on Human Evil and Muddled Thinking - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 September 2007 11:43PM

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Comment author: mtraven 17 September 2007 02:31:00AM 0 points [-]

Do not take my rhetorical flourishes overly literally. We may be meat machines without an inhabiting ghost, but that doesn't mean that "soul" doesn't have meaningful connotations. In this context, it (roughly) means "our deep-seated representations of ourselves, and others, and morality, and our ability to empathize with others." It means that a rationality that only considers your own personal ends (as HA seems to advocate) is deficient. It means that people who blithely talk about torture as an option probably haven't spent too much effort imagining themselves, or a loved one, as the torturer or torture victim in the scenarios they are planning.

"Losing your soul" means getting out of touch with your basic humanity. Rationality is all well and good, but rationality alone can't suffice to make moral judgments -- as the case of Eichmann illustrates. Consider "soul" as shorthand for a whole bunch of basic, irrational, but vital aspects of thought.