Eliezer_Yudkowsky 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: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 August 2008 09:00:33AM 2 points [-]

You can apply the standard of goodness to all intelligent beings, no problem. It's just that they won't apply it to themselves.

The content of "good" is an abstracted idealized dynamic, or as Steven put it, a rigid designator (albeit a self-modifying rigid designator). Thus what is good, or what is not good, is potentially as objective as whether a pile of pebbles is prime. It is just that not every possible optimization process, or every possible mind, does what is good. That's all.