MarsColony_in10years comments on The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 August 2008 10:00PM

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Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 22 September 2015 06:27:56PM *  0 points [-]

the difference between "because it is the human one" and "because it is h-right" sounds a lot less convincing.

If I see a toddler in the path of a boulder rolling downhill, I don't ask myself "should I help the bolder, or the toddler?" and conclude "the toddler, because it is the human one."

If I were to even pause and ask myself a question, it would be "what should I do?" and the answer would be "save the toddler, because it is h-right".

Perhaps h-right is "just the human perspective", but that's not the reason I save the toddler. Similarly, the bolder rolls downhill because F=G(m1m2)/r^2, not because it is what boulders do. It is what boulders do, but that's different from the question of why they do what they do.