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army1987 comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong
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No, I don't. To explain why, let me point out that you list of four questions neatly divides into two halves.
Your first two questions are empirically testable questions about what reality is. As such they are answerable by the usual scienc-y means and a rational person will have to accept the answers.
Your last two questions are value-based questions about what should be. They are not answerable by science and the answers are culturally determined. It is perfectly possible to be very rational and at the same time believe that, say, homosexuality is a great evil.
Rationality does not determine values.
The question “should people be allowed to do in their bedroom whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm [directly] anyone [else]?” (extra words added to address Vaniver's point) can be split into two: “which states of the world would allowing people to do in their bedroom etc. result in?”, and “which states of the world are good?”
Now, it's been claimed that most disagreements about policies are about the former and all neurologically healthy people would agree about the latter if they thought about it clearly enough -- which would make Sophronius's claim below kind-of sort-of correct -- but I'm no longer sure of that.
First, I don't think this claim is true. Second, I'm not sure what "neurologically healthy" means. I know a lot of people I would call NOT neurotypical. And, of course, labeling people mentally sick for disagreeing with the society's prevailing mores was not rare in history.
This is what you are missing. The simple fact that someone disagrees does not mean they are mentally sick or have fundamentally different value systems. It could equally well mean that either they or the "prevailing social mores" are simply mistaken. People have been known to claim that 51 is a prime number, and not because they actually disagree about what makes a number prime, but just because they were confused at the time.
It's not reasonable to take people's claims that "by 'should' I mean that X maximises utility for everyone" or "by 'should' I mean that I want X" at face value, because people don't have access to or actually use logical definitions of the everyday words they use, they "know it when they see it" instead.
No, I don't think I'm missing this piece. The claim is very general: ALL "neurologically healthy people".
People can certainly be mistaken about matters of fact. So what?
Of course not, the great majority of people are not utilitarians and have no interest in maximizing utility for everyone. In normal speech "should" doesn't mean anything like that.