"Universally Preferable Behavior" by Stefan Molyneux, "Argumentation Ethics" by Hans Hermann Hoppe, and of course Objectivism, to name the most famous ones. Generally the ones I'm referring to all try to deduce some sort of Objective Ethics and (surprise) it turns out that property rights are an inherent property of the universe and capitalism is a moral imperative.
Forgive me if you're thinking of some other libertarians who don't have crazy ethical theories. I didn't mean to make gross generalizations. I've just observed that libertarian philosophers who consciously promote their theories of ethics tend to be of this flavor.
Why is the discrimination problem "unfair"? It seems like in any situation where decision theories are actually put into practice, that type of reasoning is likely to be popular. In fact I thought the whole point of advanced decision theories was to deal with that sort of self-referencing reasoning. Am I misunderstanding something?
Maybe "progress" doesn't refer to equality, but autonomy. It does seem like the progression of social organization generally leads to individual autonomy and equality of opportunity. Egalitarianism is a nice talking point for politicians, but when we say "progress" we really mean individual autonomy.
I think the correct comparison would be, "since no one can agree on the nature of Earth/Earth's existence, Earth must not exist" but this is ridiculous since everyone agrees on at least one fact about Earth: we live on it. The original argument still stands. Denying the existence of god(s) doesn't lead to any ridiculous contradictions of universally experienced observations. Denying Earth's geometry does.
I think the DRH quote is pretty out of context, and Eliezer's commentary on it is pretty unfair. DRH has a deeply personal respect for human intelligence. He doesn't look forward to the singularity because he (correctly) points out that it will be the end of humanity. Most SI/LessWrong people accept that and look forward to it, but for Hofstadter the current view of the singularity is an extremely pessimistic view of the future. Note that this is simply a result of his personal beliefs. He never claims that people are wrong to look forward to superintellig...
In any decision involving an Omega like entity that can run perfect simulations of you, there wouldn't be a way to tell if you were inside the simulation or in the real universe. Therefore, in situations where the outcome depends on the results of the simulation, you should act as though you are in the simulation. For example, in counterfactual mugging, you should take the lesser amount because if you're in Omega's simulation you guarantee your "real life" counterpart the larger sum.
Of course this only applies if the entity you're dealing with happens to be able to run perfect simulations of reality.
I know this is an old post, I just wanted to write down my answers to the "morality as preference" questions.
Why do people seem to mean different things by "I want the pie" and "It is right that I should get the pie"? Why are the two propositions argued in different ways?
Do the statements, "I liked that movie" and "That movie was good" sound different? The latter is phrased as a statement of fact, while the former is obviously a statement of preference. Unless the latter is said by a movie critic or...
This is an awesome article. But I've always been bothered by people's expectations when it comes to arriving on time for things. In my experience, people are less annoyed at the person who leaves early than the person who arrives late, even if they miss the same amount of the meeting. The usual reasons people give for avoiding being late (missing content, disrupting the meeting) apply just as much to leaving early. Why the double standard? Also, people are generally more understanding if you have to miss something than if you are an hour late, for some reason.
This is all completely anecdotal, obviously.
If a meeting starts with most important things, and progresses to least important ones, missing the beginning is more serious. Also a person leaving early is just missing the latest part, but a person coming late may be missing an important context for things discussed later -- repeating this context for them is a waste of time for others, but not repeating may cause them to ask or suggest irrelevant things.
It occurred to me that I have no idea what people mean by the word "observer". Rather, I don't know if a solid reductionist definition for observation exists. The best I can come up with is "an optimization process that models its environment". This is vague enough to include everything we associate with the word, but it would also include non-conscious systems. Is that okay? I don't really know.
It seems to me that in at least some of these examples you are confusing the map with the territory. Take genetics:
Genes don't proliferate by being good for the species; they win by being good for themselves.
Failing to be "good for the species" is not a fact about evolution, or genes. Thinking that evolution was supposed to be "good for the species" was just a heuristic humans used when trying to understand evolution. The "selfish gene" does not say anything meaningful about the phenomenon of evolution, it just shows that ...
To my mind, the people asking the question frequently neglect the second-order effects of regularly talking about politics on the sort of people who will join LW and what their primary goals are.
Could you clarify this point a little? I though the primary goals of LW include refining and promoting human rationality, and I see no reason why this goal would not apply to politics. Especially since irrational political theories can have a directly negative effect on the quality of life for many people.
Could you clarify this point a little?
Sure.
The Internet is full of people who seem to have as one of their primary goals to expound their chosen tribe's political affiliation and defend it against all opposition, even in spaces predominantly dedicated to something else.
If LessWrong becomes a place where local norms allow discussion of the nominal rationality of Libertarianism, or Liberalism, or Conservatism, or whatever, and contrasting it with the demonstrable irrationality of other political ideologies, I expect that a subset of those people will de...
Hello, I am Nicholas, an undergraduate studying music at Portland State University. Even though my (at least academic) primary area of study is the arts, the philosophy of rationality and science has always been a large part of my intellectual pursuits. I found this site about a year ago and read many articles, but I recently decided to try to participate. Even before I was a rationalist, my education was entirely self-driven by a desire to seek the truth, even when the truth conflicted with what was widely believed by those around me (teachers, parents, e...
Am I correct in (roughly) summarizing your conclusion in the following quote?
Yes, there really is morality, and we can locate it in reality — either as a set of facts about the well-being of conscious creatures, or as a set of facts about what an ideally rational and perfectly informed agent would prefer, or as some other set of natural facts.
If so, what is the logical difference between your theory and moral relativism? What if a person's set of natural facts for morality is "those acts which the culture I was born into deem to be moral"?
I view intellectual property as the logical conclusion of the "unhealthiness" Eliezer is describing. I laugh when I look at all the ridiculous patents and copyrights that exist, but then I get scared when I remember that someone can use legal force against me for discovering those ideas simply because they discovered them first.
It's not meant to be "serious philosophy". He's not presenting the ideas in the book as being literally true, he's just provoking the reader to look at the issues in the book in a different light. Forcing the reader to consider alternative hypotheses, if you will.