Multiheaded comments on The Moral Void - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 June 2008 08:52AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (105)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 February 2012 06:16:51PM *  14 points [-]

Maybe they are right.

People have been demonstrably willing to make everyone live at a lower standard of living rather than let a tiny minority grow obscenely rich and everyone else be moderately well off. In other words we seem to be willing to pay a price for equality. Why wouldn't this work in the other direction? Maybe we prefer to induce more suffering overall if this prevents a tiny minority suffering obscenely.

Too many people seem to think perfectly equally weighed altruism (everyone who shares the mystical designation of "person" has a equal weight and after that you just do calculus to maximize overall "goodness") that sometimes hides under the word "utilitarianism" on this forum, is anything but another grand moral principle that claims to, but fails, to really compactly represent our shards of desire. If you wouldn't be comfortable building an AI to follow that rule and only that rule, why are so many people keen on solving all their personal moral dilemmas with it?

Comment author: Multiheaded 10 February 2012 06:26:59PM 0 points [-]

Konkvistador, I applaud your thougtful and weighed approach to the problem of equality. It has been troubling me too, and I'm glad to see that you're careful not to lean in any one direction before observing the wider picture. That's a grave matter indeed.