No matter what verbal habits you get into, you're going to prefer to be able to walk rather than hobble, to see rather than to not see, etc.

Those are common preferences, but not universal. Deaf people as a group/culture have a bit of a reputation in this area, for one, and then there's transabled people...

Not that that's really the point of avoiding the language. The point of avoiding the language is more along the lines of avoiding reinforcing the meme that people with those traits are less valuable and can be ignored when making plans. (Example, though a weak one. For a more concrete one: How accessible is your area? Try to go a day without using any stairs except the ones in your home, including e.g. stepping down off a sidewalk.)

I very, very, strongly disapprove of terrorism. Terrorists, of course, would disagree. There is no objective sense in which one of us can be "right", unless you go out of your way to specifically define "right" as those actions which agree with one side or the other.

There is a way in which someone can be wrong. If someone holds to a set of values that contains contradictions , they cannot claim to be right. Moral arguments in fact do often make appeals to consistency -- "if you support equal rights for women, you should support equal rights for gays"

I was under the impression it had a meaning like "coerce [by means of gifts]", but apparently it's closer to "supply". As such, I 'lost' the word that I thought it was.

I have an inkling that the meaning I thought it had is a connotation, but I'm not certain. How have you seen it used?

I'm glad! I don't like losing vocabulary (I was sad when I lost "ply", and am still conflicted over the word's correct meaning).

Also: that's a brilliant entry you've linked to there, and I'll have to toss it around in my brain a bit. Thanks!

Yes, this was the basis for a Jerry Seinfeld comedy routine: "We need to have a pre-gym, a gym-before-the-gym. A place where you can get yourself fit enough to be comfortable going to the regular gym." (And this actually isn't far from the reason for the success of the franchise Curves.)

I was strongly voted up a while back for making the above point and then suggesting we have the analog website for LessWrong -- a place where people can learn and discuss this stuff without being intimindated by those who know more.

I'm half convinced. However, I keep reading that inactivity is unhealthy regardless of whether it is fattening. Therefore fat people have good reason to try to resist the tendency to inactivity induced in them by their fatness.

So: why are fat people inactive? My only tentative guess is that it is difficult for them to move their bodies, and they respond to the difficulty by moving less. This suggests the following possible remedy: strength training. With stronger muscles, your body feels like less of a burden, and so you are more likely to move around.

The general idea is - don't use [(non-value-judgment) terms that describe certain types of people] as value judgments. Trivial examples are: "bad" is okay, if somewhat anemic (!!! Wait, is that offensive? I'll leave it in in case anyone wants to address that question), because it's not identifying any particular group as "bad" except... "bad people". "Gay" should be discouraged, because it's basically saying "people who are gay are bad, so I am calling you gay to indicate that you are bad".

there aren't just people fulfilling their preferences.

You missed a word in my original. I said that there were agents trying to fulfill their preferences. Now, per my comment at the end of your subthread with Amanojack, I realize that the word "preferences" may be unhelpful. Let me try to taboo it:

There are intelligent agents who assign higher values to some futures than others. I observe them generally making an effort to actualize those futures, but sometimes failing due to various immediate circumstances, which we could call cognitive overrides. What I mean by that is that these agents have biases and heuristics which lead them to poorly evaluate the consequences of actions.

Even if a human sleeping on the edge of a cliff knows that the cliff edge is right next to him, he will jolt if startled by noise or movement. He may not want to fall off the cliff, but the jolt reaction occurs before he is able to analyze it. Similarly, under conditions of sufficient hunger, thirst, fear, or pain, the analytical parts of the agent's mind give way to evolved heuristics.

definition of morality (that doesn't involve the word preferences) is that set of habits that are most likely to bring long-term happiness to oneself and those around one.

If that's how you would like to define it, that's fine. Would you agree then, that the contents of that set of habits is contingent upon what makes you and those around you happy?

Clearly there's a group of people who dislike what I've said in this thread, as I've been downvoted quite a bit.

I'm not perfectly clear on why. My only position at any point has been this:

I see a universe which contains intelligent agents trying to fulfill their preferences. Then I see conversations about morality and ethics talking about actions being "right" or "wrong". From the context and explanations, "right" seems to mean very different things. Like:

"Those actions which I prefer" or "Those actions which most agents in a particular place prefer" or "Those actions which fulfill arbitrary metric X"

Likewise, "wrong" inherits its meaning from whatever definition is given for "right". It makes sense to me to talk about preferences. They're important. If that's what people are talking about when they discuss morality, then that makes perfect sense. What I do not understand is when people use the words "right" or "wrong" independently of any agent's preferences. I don't see what they are referring to, or what those words even mean in that context.

Does anyone care to explain what I'm missing, or if there's something specific I did to elicit downvotes?

Sounds fairly close to what I think Jablonski is saying, yes.

Preference isn't the best word choice. Ultimately it comes down to realizing that I want different things at different times, but in English future wanting is sometimes hard to distinguish from present wanting, which can easily result in a subtle equivocation. This semantic slippage is injecting confusion into the discussion.

Perhaps we have all had the experience of thinking something like, "When 11pm rolls around, I want to want to go to sleep." And it makes sense to ask, "How can I make it so that I want to go to sleep when 11pm rolls around?" Sure, I presently want to go to sleep early tonight, but will I want to then? How can I make sure I will want to? Such questions of pure personal long-term utility seem to exemplify Jablonksi's definition of morality.