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komponisto2 comments on The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary? - Less Wrong
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I'm really having trouble understanding how this isn't tantamount to moral relativism -- or indeed moral nihilism. The whole point of "morality" is that it's supposed to provide a way of arbitrating between beings, or groups, with different interests -- such as ourselves and Pebblesorters. Once you give up on that idea, you're reduced, as in this post, to the tribalist position of arguing that we humans should pursue our own interests, and the Pebblesorters be damned. When a conflict arises (as it inevitably will), the winner will then be whoever has the bigger guns, or builds AI first.
Mind you, I don't disagree that this is the situation in which we in fact find ourselves. But we should be honest about the implications. The concept of "morality" is entirely population-specific: when groups of individuals with common interests come into contact, "morality" is the label they give to their common interests. So for us humans, "morality" is art, music, science, compassion, etc. in short, all the things that we humans (as opposed to Pebblesorters) like. This is what I understand Eliezer to be arguing. But if this is your position, you may as well come out and admit that you're a moral relativist, because this is the position that the people who are scared of moral relativism are in fact scared of. What they dread is a world in which Dennis could go on saying that Dennis-morality is what really matters, the rest of us disagree, war breaks out, Dennis kills us all, eats the whole pie, and is not spanked by any cosmic force. But this is indeed the world we live in.
I don't think so. I don't think it's h-right to destroy or reprogram the pebblesorters, so if we're exploring space and find them, I don't think we'll do that.
It may be P-right for them to re-program us to forget about h-right and just start sorting pebbles, though, so we want to watch out to make sure that doesn't happen..
I think the mistake that most "moral relativists" make is that they forget about the shared human morality we all have, and therefore claim that it's all arbitrary and meaningless.
Could you taboo "point" and "arbitrating"? I'm not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly.
He's also arguing that the pebblesorters p-shold pursue their own p-interests and we humans be p-damned, for that matter.
Moral realists don't believe in karmic retribution. most popular critiques of MR strawman it as something much stronger than any other kind of realism or objectivism. Objectivisms only require the availability of mind independent truths to those capable of, and interested in finding them.