My ethics are, as many commented their were in the original thread, not supported by logic. And I don't mean in an unconsidered way. Morality does not come from outside me. My "morality" is a reflection of my desires. It is not pure pleasure seeking because my desires have a longer time-view than that.
How could this ever be disproved? It is not proved in the first place. I was raised Catholic and so experienced strong claims for a right and wrong that exist outside of me. On reflection, I have largely innoculated myself against believing any claims like that, and yet I do keep looking and wondering. I mention this since the one "disproof" of my ethics I can imagine is to be shown something that leads me to believe there is a creditable source of morality outside my own desires.
Eliezer seems to equate proving all utilities are equal (or 0) with disproving all moralities. I can not easily imagine finding the same utility in receiving oral sex from a healthy loving partner as I find in putting my healthy useful hand in a running blender on a whim.
So saying "yes, I would still tip cabdrivers" seems a little dishonest. I would still tip cabdrivers because I would want to, which means I would find more utility in it than in NOT tipping cabdrivers, so I would have failed to perform the axiomatic steps.
I suppose if I do perform the axiomatic steps, if there were no morality in the sense that all utilities were equal, I would be dead, or more probably would never have been alive. Life does not survive without utility, probably all life, certainly chordata.
And I would certainly still read overcomingbias.com since that is already immoral, I should be working instead.
Today's post, What Would You Do Without Morality? was originally published on 29 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Opposite Sex, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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