= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Ghatanathoah comments on The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (113)
To say that Eliezer is a moral relativist because he realizes that a primality sorter might care about primality rather than morality, is equivalent to calling him a primality relativist because he realizes that a human might care about morality rather than primality.
But by Eliezer's standards, it's impossible for anyone to be a relativist about anything.
Consider what Einstein means when he says time and space are relative. He doesn't mean you can just say whatever you want about them, he means that they're relative to a certain reference frame. An observer on Earth may think it's five years since a spaceship launched, and an observer on the spaceship may think it's only been one, and each of them is correct relative to their reference frame.
We could define "time" to mean "time as it passes on Earth, where the majority of humans live." Then an observer on Earth is objectively correct to believe that five years have passed since the launch. An observer on the spaceship who said "One year has passed" would be wrong; he'd really mean "One s-year has passed." Then we could say time and space weren't really relative at all, and people on the ground and on the spaceship were just comparing time to s-time. The real answer to "How much time has passed" would be "Five years."
Does that mean time isn't really relative? Or does it just mean there's a way to describe it that doesn't use the word "relative"?
Or to give a more clearly wrong-headed example: English is objectively the easiest language in the world, if we accept that because the word "easy" is an English word it should refer to ease as English-speakers see it. When Kyousuke says Japanese is easier for him, he really means it's mo wakariyasui translated as "j-easy", which is completely different. By this way of talking, the standard belief that different languages are easier, relative to which one you grew up speaking, is false. English is just plain the easiest language.
Again, it's just avoiding the word "relative" by talking in a confusing and unnatural way. And I don't see the difference between talking about "easy" vs. "j-easy" and talking about "right" vs. "p-right".
The reason people think that Eliezer is really a relativist is that they see concepts like "good" and "right" as reducing down to mean, "the thing that I [the speaker, whoever it is] values." Eliezer is arguing that that is not what they reduce down to. He argues that "good" and "right" reduce down to something like "concepts related to enhancing the wellbeing of conscious eudaemonic life forms." It's not a trick of the language, Eliezer is arguing that "right" refers to [wellbeing related concept] and p-right refers to [primality sorting related concept]. The words "good" and "right" might be relative but the referent [wellbeing of conscious eudaemonic life forms] is not. The reason Eliezer focuses on fairness is that the concept of fairness is less nebulous than the concept of "right" so it is easier to see that it is not arbitrary.
Pebble sorters and humans can both objectively agree on what it means to enhance the wellbeing of conscious eudaemonic life forms. Where they differ is whether they care about doing it. Pebble sorters don't care about the wellbeing of others. Why would they, unless it happened to help them sort pebbles?
Similarly, humans and pebble sorters can both agree on which pebble heaps are prime-numbered. Where they differ is if they care about sorting pebbles. Humans don't care about pebble-sorting. Why would they, unless it helped then enhance the wellbeing of themselves and others?
So if you define morality as "the thing that I care about," then I suppose it is relative, although I think that is not a proper use of the word "morality." But if you define it as "enhancing the wellbeing of eudaemonic life forms" then it is quite objective.
Now, there might be room for moral disagreement in that people care about different aspects of wellbeing more. But that would be grounds for moral pluralism, not moral relativism. Regardless of what specific aspects of morality people focus on, certain things, like torturing the human population for all eternity, would be immoral [wellbeing non-enhancing] no matter what.
So what is the difference between easy vs j-easy and right vs p-right? Well, easy and j-easy both refer to the concept "can be done with little effort expended, even by someone who is completely new and unpracticed in it." English is not "easy" because only those practiced in it can speak it with little effort expended. Ditto for Japanese. The concept is the same in both languages. "Right," by contrast, refers to "enhances wellbeing of eudaemonic creatures," while p-right refers to "sorting pebbles in prime numbered heaps" They are two completely different concepts and that fact has nothing to do with the language being used.