Mat comments on Fake Morality - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 November 2007 09:32PM

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Comment author: Mat 04 August 2012 10:08:19AM *  0 points [-]

The fear of losing a moral compass is itself a moral compass

Doesn't this sound like a belief in belief?

I don't want God to be my moral compass, because I don't believe in it and I don't want my good behaviour (and others' behaviour, too) to be built upon a sand castle. But I don't like this foundation of morality, too: it sounds absolute, which makes it incomparable with others'. Also, what about sociopaths who don't have this moral commanding hard wired in their brain? Should them be allowed to kill?

I prefer to give value to human life, just because I acknowledge that it has a great potentiality, and then maximize the utility function. This kind of argument for morality is the safest (at least, among intelligent people: intelligent sociopaths would understand it, dumb ones would not)