= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RaelwayScot comments on Stupid Questions, 2nd half of December - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (186)
Everyone can choose their preferred state then, at least to the extent it is not indoctrinated or biologically determined. It is rational to invest energy into maintaining or achieving this state (because the state presumably provides you with a steady source of reward), which might involve convincing others of your preferred state or prevent them from threating it (e.g. by putting them into jail). There is likely an absolute truth (to the extent physics is consistent from our point of view), but no absolute morale (because it's all memes in an undirected process). Terrorists do nothing wrong from their point of view, but from mine it threatens my preferred state, so I will try to prevent terrorism. We may seem lucky that many preferred states converge to the same goals which are even fairly sustainable, but that is just an evolutionary necessity and perhaps mostly a result of empathy and the will to survive (otherwise our species wouldn't have survived in paleolithic groups of hunters and gatherers).
Basically your argument is: "I can't think of a way to justify morality besides saying that it's my own prefered state, therefore nobody can come up with an argument to justify morality."
Is it? I think, the act of convincing other people of your preferred state of the world is exactly what justifying morality is. But that action policy is only a meme, as you said, which is individually chosen based on many criteria (including aesthetics, peer-pressure, consistency).
"Only a meme" doesn't negate that it's about something real and that there can be resonable arguments why some memes are better than others.
I mean "only a meme" in the sense, that morality is not absolute, but an individual choice. Of course, there can be arguments why some memes are better than others, that happens during the act of individuals convincing each other of their preferences.