Shane_Legg comments on Rebelling Within Nature - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 July 2008 12:32PM

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Comment author: Shane_Legg 13 July 2008 01:50:19PM 3 points [-]

I see this as a continuation of the same theme: a kind of "frame of reference" issue.

For example, I suspect that time doesn't exist when you look at the universe from the most broad perspective. Instead, you have this kind of platonia on which time is just a relation between different points across one of its dimensions. But that doesn't mean that time doesn't exist within my personal frame of reference. I'm here experiencing time right now. Similarly, I know that my hand is mostly empty space, from a universal point of view, but that doesn't mean that it makes sense of me to relate to my hand as being empty space. In my frame of reference it's quite solid. Same for freewill: I understand that from the universal perspective it doesn't exist in some sense, but for me in my frame of reference it does. "I" am "free" to do what "I" decide to do. Viewed correctly there is no contradiction, just as there is no contradiction between the fact that my hand is "empty space" and yet quite solid.

Here again we have the same thing, but with morality. If we zoom out to the universal scale perhaps there is no morality. However, the universal scale is not where I am. Shooting my mother is still wrong according to my values and principles, just like how I have freewill, time exists and my hand is solid. My desire to preserve my mother's life may well have an evolutionary explanation, however that doesn't in any way invalidate my desire, or give me any reason to discard it, or even want to discard it.