1a. Deontology/virtue ethics is a special case of consequentialism. The reason for following deontological rules is because the consequences that result from following deontological rules almost always tend to be better than the consequences of not following deontological rules. The exceptions where it is wiser to not follow deontological rules are generally rare.
1b. Those are social mores, not morals. If a human is brainwashed into shutting down the forces of empathy and caring within themselves, then they can be argued into treating any social more as a ...
1. Ask yourself, what sorts of things do we humans typically refer to as "morality" and what things do we NOT refer to as "morality"? There are clearly things that do not go in the morality bucket, like your favorite flavor of ice cream. But okay, what other things do you think go in the morality bucket and why?
2. Because a) the same sorts of arguments can be made in reverse. Just as Minnie or Maxie might come to accept Eye for an Eye on pragmatic grounds because it makes society as a whole better/less bad, Goldie might accept Maximize ...
Except that for humans, life is a journey, not a destination. If you make a maximize flourishing optimizer you would need to rigorously define what you meant by flourishing, which requires a rigorous definition of a general human utility function, which doesnt and cannot exist. Human values are instrumental all the way down. Some values are just more instrumental than others--that is the mechanism which allows for human values to be over 4d experiences rather than 3d states. I mean, what other mechanism could result in that for a human mind? This is a natu
...good point, I missed that, will fix later. more likely that effect would result from programming the AI with the overlap between those utility functions, but I'm not totally sure so I'll have to think about it. I don't think that point is actually necessary for the crux of my argument, though. Like I said, I'll have to think about it. Right now it's almost 4am and Im really sick now.
In other words, people who win at offline life spend less time on the internet because they're devoting more time offline. And since rationalists are largely an online community rather than offline at least outside of the bay area, this results in rationalists dropping out of the conversation when they start winning. That's a surprisingly plausible alternative explanation. I'll have to think about this.
So everything we do in life is problem solving and therefore storytelling was originally a form of problem solving, and this explains the origin of storytelling how? This seems like saying "the sky is made of quarks, all matter is made of quarks. Therefore this explains the origins of the sky." But just saying "quarks!" doesn't tell you where the quarks are and where they're going and how far away they all are from each other in what directions. And the positions of all the many quarks involved are too many to keep track of them all individually with a hum
...In some societies it might not be considered socially acceptable to want to punish someone merely because what they are doing will raise their social status. That sort of thing is dishonest because social status is reputational and meant to be earned. If someone tries to punish you for doing something to earn status, they probably did not come by their social status by honest means.
In societies where people think like that, I imagine no one would want to say "this act of altruism will increase their status and so should be punished", because that is a low
...This. If less wrong had been introduced to an audience of self-improvement health buffs and business people instead of nerdy booksmart Harry Potter fans, things would have been drastically different. it is possible to become more effective at optimizing for other goals besides just truth. People here seem to naively assume so as long as they have enough sufficiently accurate information everything else will simply fall into place and they'll do everything else right automatically without needing to really practice or develop any other skills. I will be speaking more on this later.
Except that you're using "useful to believe" as a criteria for determining whether something is true or not. Also, if you had developed the skills, qualities, attitudes, and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner, you wouldn't need to believe in a God, because you would know how to live with the knowledge that there is no God and not be broken by it. If you truly had developed the ability to handle the truth safely, it wouldn't matter what the truth was, you'd be able to handle it regardless. That is to say, if a God does not exi
...Thanks. Sorry for getting spooked. I have some major anxiety and insecurities and trust issues with other people which sometimes rears its ugly head and makes things difficult for me. I would love to get some feedback from you on my story.
Thanks!
Thanks I'd forgotten about that. I have done what you suggested so I'll put the link back.
You should be wary of believing something because you think it's useful to believe it, rather than because it's true. For every useful untrue belief, it should be possible to get the same or greater benefit from believing something that's true instead, if you have developed the skills, qualities, attitudes and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner.
That's the thing. Unitarian-universalist churches accept everyone as members no matter what they believe. They don't require their members to have a particular belief system. So if you change your beliefs at any point you won't have to leave.
This is what fiction is for. A principle can be presented as a character which personifies it to explain it better, but that's different than telling people that the character is a real person rather than a fictional symbol meant to demonstrate a point.
A good example of a fictional deity character meant to demonstrate a point but which is not meant to be believed as real would be the Goddess of Everything Else. I will admit that the Goddess of Everything Else represents rationalist/transhumanist values much better than the Christian deity. Reality is often
...Thanks! Your saying that makes me instantly like you too. :D
To some extent, but not all in one place. One of the main characters of the novelette series I'm writing, Bertie is a self insert at first, and some of his history plays into the plot. I've also posted about some of it on my blog.
SPOILER: Earthlings: People of the Dawn part 6 -- the Ancestor's Legacy version 2 is a depiction of a genuine utopian future, and at one point one of the characters finds out about Bertie's past psych problems in "Ancient Earth: the MMORPG" and there's a very stark contrast between the game's depiction of pre-rationalist Bertie an
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1. On the deontology/virtue ethics vs consequentialism thing, you're right I don't know how I missed that, thanks!
1a. I'll have to think about that a bit more.
2. Well, if we were just going off of the four moralities I described, then I already named two examples where two of those moralities are unable to converge: a pure flourishing maximizer wouldn't want to mercy kill the human species, but a pure suffering minimizer would. A pure flourishing maximizer would be willing to have one person tortured forever if that was a necessary prer... (read more)