While reading your response the first time I got a bit annoyed frankly speaking. So I decided to answer it later when I wouldn't just scream blue!
I might have misinterpreted your meaning, but it seems like you present a straw man of my argument. I was trying to make concepts like forbidden and permitted pay rent - even in a world where there is no objective morality, as well as show that our - at least my - intuition about "forbiddeness" and "permittedness" is derived form the kind of consequences that they result in. It's not like something is not permitted in a group, but do not have any bad consequences if preformed.
The largest rent I can ever imagine getting from terms which are in wide and common use is to use them to mean the same things everybody else means when using them. To me, it seems coming up with private definitions for public words decreases the value of these words.
I was trying to make concepts like forbidden and permitted pay rent - even in a world where there is no objective morality,
There are many words used to make moral statements. When you declare that no moral statement can be objectively true, then I don't think it makes sense to redefin...
Do you believe in an objective morality capable of being scientifically investigated (a la Sam Harris *or others*), or are you a moral nihilist/relativist? There seems to be some division on this point. I would have thought Less Wrong to be well in the former camp.
Edit: There seems to be some confusion - when I say "an objective morality capable of being scientifically investigated (a la Sam Harris *or others*)" - I do NOT mean something like a "one true, universal, metaphysical morality for all mind-designs" like the Socratic/Platonic Form of Good or any such nonsense. I just mean something in reality that's mind-independent - in the sense that it is hard-wired, e.g. by evolution, and thus independent/prior to any later knowledge or cognitive content - and thus can be investigated scientifically. It is a definite "is" from which we can make true "ought" statements relative to that "is". See drethelin's comment and my analysis of Clippy.