Cyan2 comments on Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans) - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 October 2008 09:00PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (87)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Cyan2 15 October 2008 03:21:11AM 2 points [-]

But in an *interesting world* of combinatorial explosion of indirect consequences, and worse yet, critically underspecified inputs to any such supposed moral calculations, no system of reasoning can get very far betting on longer-term *specific* consequences.

This point and the subsequent discussion are tangential to the point of the post, to wit, evolutionary adaptations can cause us to behave in ways that undermine our moral intentions. To see this, limit the universe of discourse to actions which have predictable effects and note that Eliezer's argument still makes strong claims about how humans should act.