Silas comments on "Arbitrary" - Less Wrong
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Comments (14)
It would really rock if you could show the context in which someone used the word "arbitrary" but in a way that just passed the recursive buck.
Here's where I would use it:
[After I ask someone a series of questions about whether certain actions would be immoral]
Me: Now you're just being arbitrary! Eliezer Yudkowsky: Taboo "arbitrary"! Me: Okay, he's deciding what's immoral based on whim. Eliezer Yudkowsky: Taboo "whim"! Me: Okay, his procedures for deciding what's immoral can't be articulated with finite words to a stranger such that he, and the stranger using his morality articulation, yield the same answers to all morality questions.
I'll send my salary requirements if you want. ;-)