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Hariant comments on Value evolution - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: PhilGoetz 08 December 2011 11:47PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 11 December 2011 03:13:41AM *  3 points [-]

I cannot envisage a scenario in which we would believe that the opinions held by people in the past were better than our present opinions, and stably maintain that belief without changing our opinions.

Isn't this part of basis for many of the Abrahmic faiths, and possibly others? The revelation(s) was/were in the past, and the farther we get from those values, the worse off we get.

Comment author: gjm 11 December 2011 03:02:32PM 1 point [-]

That's a similar case to the example I gave, and it has the same features that (I think) make it unhelpful as a defence of Phil's argument: (1) in that situation, the past opinions that we think were better than our present ones are ones we don't know (and therefore can't choose to adopt), and (2) pretty much exactly the same scenario works pretty much exactly as well for values as for opinions.

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