ata comments on Morality as Fixed Computation - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 August 2008 01:00AM

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Comment author: ata 14 January 2011 09:03:18PM *  5 points [-]

The answer to the question "what is right?" is: Whatever action will save the most people/create the most happiness/etc.

As I understand it, it's not that the latter is the answer to that question, it's that they're the same question.

It's not that it just happens to be Right to do what a certain Huge Blob of Computation tells you to do; the idea is that moral words like "right" and "should" are pointers to that Huge Blob and nothing else. Beyond that, there's no separable essence of morality such that it's anything other than a tautology to say "What is right? Whatever action will save the most lives, create the most fun, ..." The feeling of separable epiphenomenal essences is a common (not just about morality) fallacy that's discussed in several posts in the Words sequence, IIRC.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 15 January 2011 12:33:34AM 1 point [-]

That's a good way to explain it. Thank you.