thomblake comments on The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 December 2007 02:00PM

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Comment author: thomblake 11 May 2011 06:19:07PM 1 point [-]

"Exterminating us is wrong!" ... and the alien could say: "LOL. No, silly humans. Exterminating you is right!" And there is no sense in which either party has an objective "rightness" that the other lacks. They are each referring to the utility functions they care about.

Note that the definitional dispute rears its head in the case where the humans say, "Exterminating us is morally wrong!" in which case strong moral relativists insist the aliens should respond, "No, exterminating you is morally right!", while moral realists insist the aliens should respond "We don't care that it's morally wrong - it's shmorally right!"

There is also a breed of moral realist who insists that the aliens would have somehow also evolved to care about morality, as the Kantians who believe morality follows necessarily from basic reason. I think the burden of proof still falls on them for that, but unfortunately there aren't many smart aliens to test.