Richard_Hollerith comments on Is Morality Given? - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 July 2008 08:12AM

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Comment author: Richard_Hollerith 07 July 2008 07:34:00PM 0 points [-]

It seems the ultimate confusion here is that we are talking about instrumental values . . . before agreeing on terminal values . . .

If we could agree on some well-defined goal, e.g. maximization of human happiness, we could much more easily theorize on whether a particular case of murder would benefit or harm that goal.

denis bider, under the CEV plan for singularity, no human has to give an unambiguous definition or enumeration of his or her terminal values before the launch of the seed of the superintelligence. Consequently, those who lean toward the CEV plan feel much freer to regard themselves as having hundreds of terminal values. Consequently, refraining from murder might easily be a terminal value for them.

Defn. "Murder" is killing under particular circumstances, e.g., not by uniformed soldiers during a war, not in self-defense, not by accident.