This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.
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How often should these be made? I think one every three months is the correct frequency.
Costanza made the original thread, but I am OpenThreadGuy. I am therefore not only entitled but required to post this in his stead. But I got his permission anyway.
All questions about the morality of actions can be restated as questions about the moral value of the states of the world that those actions give rise to.
All questions about the moral value of the states of the world can in principle be answered by evaluating those world-states in terms of the various things we've evolved to value, although actually performing that evaluation is difficult.
Questions about whether the moral value of states of the world should be evaluated in terms of the things we've evolved to value, as opposed to evaluated in terms of something else, can be answered by pointing out that the set of things we've evolved to value is what right means and is therefore definitionally the right set of things to use.
I consider that third point kind of silly, incidentally.
From Costanza's original thread (entire text):
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