adamisom comments on By Which It May Be Judged - LessWrong

35 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2012 04:26AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 10 December 2012 08:51:44PM 9 points [-]

Consider Bob. Bob, like most unreflective people, settles many moral questions by "am I disgusted by it?" Bob is disgusted by, among other things, feces, rotten fruit, corpses, maggots, and men kissing men. Internally, it feels to Bob like the disgust he feels at one of those stimuli is the same as the disgust he feels at the other stimuli, and brain scans show that they all activate the insula in basically the same way.

Bob goes through aversion therapy (or some other method) and eventually his insula no longer activates when he sees men kissing men.

When Bob remembers his previous reaction to that stimuli, I imagine he would remember being disgusted, but not be disgusted when he remembers the stimuli. His positions on, say, same-sex marriage or the acceptability of gay relationships have changed, and he is aware that they have changed.

Do you think this example agrees with your account? If/where it disagrees, why do you prefer your account?

Comment author: adamisom 11 December 2012 06:32:19PM *  3 points [-]

I just wanted to tell everyone that it is great fun to read this in the voice of that voice actor for the Enzyte commercial :)