Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6

Unnamed

8 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6

by Unnamed

27th Nov 2010

1 min read

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Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.

After 61 chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and 5 discussion threads with over 500 comments each, HPMOR discussion has graduated from the main page and moved into the Less Wrong discussion section (which seems like a more appropriate location). You can post all of your insights, speculation, and, well, discussion about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic here.

Previous threads are available under the harry_potter tag on the main page (or: one, two, three, four, five); this and future threads will be found under the discussion section tag (since there is a separate tag system for the discussion section). See also the author page for (almost) all things HPMOR, and AdeleneDawner's Author's Notes archive for one thing that the author page is missing.

As a reminder, it's useful to indicate at the start of your comment which chapter you are commenting on. Time passes but your comment stays the same.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6 — LessWrong

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PhilGoetz15y-10

I personally would bet at 99:1 odds that he would disagree strongly with the second half (as the other commenters have pointed out).

You can't have the first half without the second half. Either you are a moral absolutist, or a moral relativist. Moralities are things that can be ordered by an independent observer, or they aren't. I don't think there's any middle ground. Saying "Gandalf is morally superior to Sauron when seen from a perspective similar to that of Gandalf; but Sauron is morally superior to Gandalf when seen from a perspective similar to that of Sauron", is not saying that Gandalf is morally superior to Sauron. Claiming that they are the same thing is like saying, "I can believe that 3 is greater than 2 without admitting that there is any objective basis for comparing the magnitudes of numbers, and without denying that 2 may be greater than 3 to someone else."

David_Allen15y10

Either you are a moral absolutist, or a moral relativist. Moralities are things that can be ordered by an independent observer, or they aren't. I don't think there's any middle ground.

There appear to be different flavors of objective and subjective morality.

Moral Realism: There is objective truth, right, wrong; Moral Universalism: There is a morality that can be applied to a general class -- for example all humans; Value Pluralism: There may be multiple equally correct and fundamental value systems that conflict with each other; Moral Consequentialism: ... (read more)

7ArisKatsaris15y

If I rated morality as (2, 3) on two separate orthogonal axes of goodness (e.g. freedom and joy) and another morality as (3, 2) on the same two axes, a morality that rates (4, 4) is superior to either, and a morality that rates (1, 1) is inferior to both, while I wouldn't be able to absolutely "order" versus , unless I appropriately weighted those two values -- and those weights I needn't consider absolute constants of the universe, even if I considered the maximization of those qualities as good absolutely. Note: The above is meant as an example only, not as a description of my own system of morality.

12orthonormal15y

See, I'd give 99:1 odds that he'd strongly disagree with this as well (as do I). Now, your position is that you must be one or the other (if you're to be coherent), but I hope you can admit of the possibility that Eliezer sees that as a false dichotomy. From your perspective, this makes his metaethics a hopeless muddle of absolutism and relativism, but this should give you different predictions about how MoR turns out than would the assumption that he's a standard moral relativist. I hope we can at least agree on that much, before we turn to arguing anything else.

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