Thinking more about this, it may have been better if Eliezer had not framed his meta-ethics sequence around "the meaning of right."
If we play rationalist's taboo with our moral terms and thus avoid moral terms altogether, what Eliezer seems to be arguing is that what we really care about is not (a) that whatever states of affairs our brains are wired to send reward signals in response to be realized, but (b) that we experience peace and love and harmony and discovery and so on.
His motivation for thinking this way is a thought experiment - which might become real in the relatively near future - about what would happen if a superintelligent machine could rewire our brains. If what we really care about is (a), then we shouldn't object if the superintelligent machine rewires our brains to send reward signals only when we are sitting in a jar. But we would object to that scenario. Thus, what we care about seems not to be (a) but (b).
In a meta-ethicists terms, we could interpret Eliezer not as making an argument about the meaning of moral terms, but instead as making an argument that (b) is what gives us Reasons, not (a).
Now, all this meta-babble might not matter much. I'm pretty sure even if I was persuaded that the correct meta-ethical theory states that I should be okay with releasing a superintelligence that would rewire me to enjoy sitting in a jar, I would do whatever I could to prevent such a scenario and instead promote a superintelligence that would bring peace and joy and harmony and discovery and so on.
...what Eliezer seems to be arguing is that what we really care about is not (a) that whatever states of affairs our brains are wired to send reward signals in response to be realized, but (b) that we experience peace and love and harmony and discovery and so on.
His motivation for thinking this way is a thought experiment - which might become real in the relatively near future - about what would happen if a superintelligent machine could rewire our brains. If what we really care about is (a), then we shouldn't object if the superintelligent machine rewires o
In You Provably Can't Trust Yourself, Eliezer tried to figured out why his audience didn't understand his meta-ethics sequence even after they had followed him through philosophy of language and quantum physics. Meta-ethics is my specialty, and I can't figure out what Eliezer's meta-ethical position is. And at least at this point, professionals like Robin Hanson and Toby Ord couldn't figure it out, either.
Part of the problem is that because Eliezer has gotten little value from professional philosophy, he writes about morality in a highly idiosyncratic way, using terms that would require reading hundreds of posts to understand. I might understand Eliezer's meta-ethics better if he would just cough up his positions on standard meta-ethical debates like cognitivism, motivation, the sources of normativity, moral epistemology, and so on. Nick Beckstead recently told me he thinks Eliezer's meta-ethical views are similar to those of Michael Smith, but I'm not seeing it.
If you think you can help me (and others) understand Eliezer's meta-ethical theory, please leave a comment!
Update: This comment by Richard Chappell made sense of Eliezer's meta-ethics for me.