This paper makes me think again how amazing it is that science made any progress at all, before the middle part of the 20th century. Science is completely based on induction, and nobody understood induction in any kind of rigorous way until about 1968, but still people managed to make scientific progress. Occam, Bacon, Hume, Popper and others were basically just hand-waving; thankfully this hand-waving was nearly enough correct that it enabled science, but it was still hand-waving.

I would say that the orthogonality thesis does not necessarily imply moral non-realism... but some forms of moral non-realism do imply the orthogonality thesis, in which case rejecting the orthogonality thesis would require rejecting at least that particular kind of moral non-realism. This may cause moral non-realists of that variety to equate moral realism and a rejection of the OT.

For example, if you are a moral non-cognitivist, then according to the SEP, you believe that:

when people utter moral sentences they are not typically expressing states of mind which are beliefs or which are cognitive in the way that beliefs are. Rather they are expressing non-cognitive attitudes more similar to desires, approval or disapproval.

This would seem to imply the orthogonality thesis: different agents will have different desires and goals, and if goals have no inherent truth value and moral statements simply reflect our desires and goals, then there is no particular reason to expect agents with a higher intelligence to converge on the same goals/moral beliefs. They'll just keep their original desires/goals, since no amount of increased intelligence could reveal facts which would cause those desires/goals to change (with the possible exception of cases where increased intelligence reveals a goal to have been logically incoherent).

I know at least 10 Swedes, all of them attest to this. If you go through their departments, it becomes obvious also. It seems to be part of their culture by now. It is a technological oriented country. The downside is that universities there aren't so good as in UK. Merely the fact I know 10 Swedes, all transhumanists, while living in Brazil, being antisocial, and never being there, it is an evidence.

In itself, that view doesn't entail anything about the relation between intelligence levels and goals.

This is a bit of a tangent. But to someone like myself who thinks that moral realism is not just wrong but logically impossible - rather like other confused notions such as free will - the assumption of moral realism might lead anywhere. Just as you can prove anything from a false premise, so a moral realist who tries to decompartmentalize that belief and update on it could end up holding other false beliefs.

ETA: this is wrong, and thanks to vallinder for the correction. You can prove anything from a contradiction, but not necessarily from a false premise. However, it's still bad for you to believe strongly in false things.

If moral realism is simply the view that some positive moral claims are true, without further metaphysical or conceptual commitments, then I can't see how it could be at odds with the orthogonality thesis. In itself, that view doesn't entail anything about the relation between intelligence levels and goals.

On the other hand, the conjunction of moral realism, motivational judgment internalism (i.e. the view that moral judgments necessarily motivate), and the assumption that a sufficiently intelligent agent would grasp at least some moral truths is at odds with the orthogonality thesis. Other combinations of views may yield similar results.

From his wikipedia page:

has made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics

Sounds like either self-advertisement or a hero-worship, depending on who wrote it.

I would buy a modapuccino¹ if we lived in a 100km radius!

1. Modafinil's version of a cappuccino

Patrick Suppes to the left?

Some might find it more convenient to set this up as a Google Form.