VAuroch comments on The Meaning of Right - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 July 2008 01:28AM

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Comment author: VAuroch 25 November 2013 10:31:28PM *  0 points [-]

First, I think you are significantly off-base in your contention that Morality Attractor 2 has been implemented in most civilized societies. What you see as Attractor 2 I think is better explained by Attractor 2a: "Maximize the absolute median QALY of the in-group.", and that Clever Arguers throughout history have appealed to this desire by pointing out how much better off the in-group was, compared to a specific acceptable-target outgroup. It is, after all, much easier to provide a relative QALY surplus than an absolute QALY surplus, and our corrupted hardware is not very good at distinguishing the two. As anecdotal evidence, I consider my own morality significantly closer to 2a than 1, but definitely not similar to 2.

I would further say that it seems unlikely that the basic moral impulse is actually restricted to an arbitrary ingroup. One of those 'perfect information' aspects inherent in defining the output of the CEV would be knowing the life story of every person on the planet. Which is, if my knowledge of psychology is correct, basically an express ticket into the moral ingroup. This is why the single-child quarter-donation signs work, when appeals to the huge number of children suffering from <Disease X> don't.

So overall, I don't find that suggestion plausible. Someone with human-typical psychology who knew every person in existence as well as we know our friends, which is basically the postulated mind whose utility function is the CEV, would inherently value all their QALY.