All of draq's Comments + Replies

No Universally Compelling Arguments contains a proof that for every possible morality, there is a mind with volition to which it does not apply. Therefore, there is no absolute morality.

There is no universally compelling argument for morality as much as there is no universally compelling for reality. You can change the physical perception as well. But it does not necessary follow that there is no absolute reality.

I also have to correct my position: CEV is not absolute morality. Volition is rather a "reptor" or "sensor" of morality I ... (read more)

Again, it's not that I don't care about anything. I just happen to have a few core axioms, things that I care about for no reason. They don't feel arbitrary to me -- after all, I care about them a great deal! -- but I didn't choose to care about them. I just do.

And you believe that other minds have different core believs?

Sure, and those are the claims I take the time to evaluate and debunk.

I think we should close the discussion and take some time thinking.

Please explain the relationship between G701-702 and G698-700.

"chance is low" or ... (read more)

Thanks for the rephrasing. I would amend:

1. Weak scientific reductionist:
   c) concepts and theories in chemistry and biology are only useful high level approximations to physical models of the universe. They could be reduced to physical theories if b) does not apply.

Since I'm Pavitra, it doesn't really matter to me if G101 has a point; I care about it anyway.

So there is no normative rule that Pavitra (you) should care about G101. It just happens, it could also be different and it does not matter. That is what I call (moral) nihilism.

Don't you ever ask why you should care (about anything, incl. yourself caring about things)? (I am not suggesting you becoming suicidal, but on the other hand, there is no normative rule against it, so... hm... I still won't)

Their claims are basically noisy. If a large group of craz

I like gensyms.

G101: Pavitra (me) cares about something.

What is the point in caring for G101?

At a certain point, the working model of reality begins to predict what the insane will claim to perceive and how those errors come about.

What if you can't predict?

I advocate the G700 view, and assert that believing G698 or G699 interferes with believing G700.

That is not how your brain works (a rough guess). Your brain thinks either G698 or G699 and then comes out with a decision about either driving or not. This heuristic process is called optimism or pessimism.

Why should I care about G695? In particular, why should I prefer it over G696, which is the CEV of all humans with volition alive in 2010, or over G697, which is the CEV of myself?

So your point is there is no point in caring for anything. Do you call yourself a nihilist?

I then investigate the two unrelated phenomena individually and eventually come to the conclusion that there is one reality between all humans, but a separate morality for each human.

Would you call yourself a naive realist? What about people on LSD, schizophrenics and religious peopl... (read more)

What do you think of Eliezer's idea of "coherent extrapolated volition of humankind" and his position that FAI should optimise it?

What about the Baby-Eaters and the Super Happy People in the story Three Worlds Collide? Do they have anything you would call "humaneness"?

Universal morality

You need to go read the sequences, and come back with specific counterarguments to the specific reasoning presented therein on the topics that you're discussing.

I don't think there is an easy way to make FAI.

Absolute morality is the coherent extrapolated volition of all entities with volition. Morality is based on values. In a universe where there are only insentient stones, there is no morality, and even if there are, they are meaningless. Morality exists only where there are values (things that we either like or dislike), or "... (read more)

If you read a physics or chemistry textbook, then you'll find a lot of words and only a few equations, whereas a mathematics textbook has much more equations and the words in the book are to explain the equations, whereas the words in a physics book are not only explaining the equations but the issues that the equations are explaining.

However, I haven't fully thought about reductionism, so do you have any recommendations that I want to read?

My current two objections:

1. Computational

According to our current physical theories, it is impossible to predict th... (read more)

When I use the word morality, then I certainly don't mean any rules of conduct.

What is your defintion of human morality?

What if the coherent extrapolated volition is the death of all people, that is, the end of all volitions?

Physical and mathematical objects

Chemists and physicists tell us which mathematical objects we're made out of. The used to think it was integers, but it turns out it wasn't.

If the physical world can be fully reduced to mathematics, we don't need chemists and physicist to tell us which mathematical objects we're made out of. A mathematician would know that, unless there is something about an electron that can not be fully reduced to mathematics.

We use mathematics to describe physical objects, but physical objects are not mathematical objects. We use la... (read more)

In that sense, everything could be a mathematical object, including qualia. We just haven't identified it.

Also, the concept of actual-but-still-unknown-X and previously-hypothesized-X can be applied to morality in terms of actual-but-still-unknown-norm and previously-hypothesized-norm.

1a.

An electron is not a mathematical object. If it were, then we wouldn't need chemists and physicsts, but only mathematicians. A mathematical object does have any behaviour, as much as a word in a language does not have any behaviour.

Mathematics and logic are tautalogical systems with defined symbols and operations. We use mathematics to describe the physical world as much as we use language to describe the moral world (value system), e.g. in behavioural biology and psychology.

Would you agree that value system is as absolute as the physical world if we ... (read more)

Sorry, I am developing my ideas in the process of the discussion and I probably have amended and changed my position several times thanks to the debate with the LW community. The biggest problem is that I haven't defined a clear set of vocabulary (because I haven't had a clear position yet), so there is a lot of ambiguity and misunderstanding which is solely my fault.

Here is a short summary of my current positions. They may not result in a coherent system. I'm working on that.

1. Value system / morality is science

Imagine an occult Pythagorean who believes t... (read more)

Are you asking me to use a certain LW-inside vocabulary? In that case, a dictionary would be helpful. Which specific word or phrase is not clear to you?

Or are you holding a logical positivist position that some words or context does not have any meaning at all?

You walk up to the fridge, get out a banana and eat it.

If I am Laplace's demon, I might be able to predict your doing (or not). But science does not explain what hunger and desire is, it can describe it using its own language, but the scientific language does not include any words to describe values. Hunger and desire have more qualities than just neuronal processes.

Anyway, the difference might be pointless, because Laplace's demon does not exist and we can't predict in principle anything more complicated than a dozen atoms, unless we have a fundamentally new theory of physics. In that case, the only thing we have left is normative/value theories that help us to predict someone's action.

I did read the article "No Universal Argument" you linked to and couldn't find any convincing rebuttal to my arguments.

I just read "Making Beliefs Pay Rent" and if I got it right, then it says that science is good (and absolute) because it can predict things while normative theories don't. That is a good point.

My belief in an absolute morality gives me the foundation to enquire moral problems. I'll try to figure out what the "absoulute good" is and try to life my life according to that.

We can predict and explain the "d... (read more)

What I meant to say is "morality is absolute as reality." I hope that clears everything.

Given that I experience God or anything supernatural empirically and I can reasonably exclude that I am suffering from hallucinations, then it is more probable for me to believe that the phenomena was supernatural rather than an improbable quantum mechanical phenonemon. Maybe what I call God is actually Frud. Maybe God "is a tuna sandwich I once made that had a special property, it created the universe, past and future." I don't expect to realise all... (read more)

A sufficiently intelligent mind might deduce "Draq believes that the absolute morality is X", but not "the absolute morality is X".

Would you still agree with the argument if you substitute "morality" with "reality"?

As I repeatedly said, morality is as absolute or relative as reality. So if you don't believe in an absolute reality either, then I can't convince you, nor do I want to, since relativism/nihilism is a perfectly attainable position.

I just think that it is very arbitrary to say one exist and the other o... (read more)

Using that defintion, morality isn't as absolute as physical reality.

Again, as I said, under your definition of absolute, which is that reality is absolute, I agree with your disapproval of my belief in absolute morality since morality is of a different quality than reality.

Our physical reality appears to be the common context that everything shares within our universe.

Your definition of absolute is plausible, but I do not share it. I think that mental phenomena exist independently from the physical world.

What makes me believe it? If I believe t... (read more)

Relevance is a good point.

Changing or stop having desires damages my belief in an absolute morality as much as changing or stop having sensory perception damages my belief in an absolute reality.

My belief in an absolute morality is as strong or as weak as my belief in my absolute reality. It doesn't matter whether morality or reality really exists, but that we treat them similarly. It is slightly dissonant to conduct science as if it exists, but to become relativist when arguing about morality.

In the end, it is not what we should believe, but how our thi... (read more)

Substitute "moral system" with "reality". Would you still agree with it?

So morality can't applied to all contexts, and so in that sense it can't be absolute.

I'm not sure how to answer this. What do you mean by "absolute".

In the same sense you used to deny the existence of absolute morality.

Does this make physical reality absolute to you?

Using that defintion, morality isn't as absolute as physical reality. Morality then only applies to self-reflective level-3 intelligence (cf that comment of mine).

But why do you believe that everything happens within the context of physical reality?

Let me present you the Cart... (read more)

So we presume that all members of SIAI want to live forever? Maybe someone enjoys sex more than longevity.

I have edited my post in such a way that the terms are now more clear.

If moral system is a normative theory, then there are many.

If moral system is morality, then there is only one.

Is there anything absolute according to your defintion?

Are numbers absolute? I can think of a context, where numbers are meaningless. E.g. if I am talking about Picasso.

Is the physical reality absolute? I can think of a context where the physical reality isn't absolute. For example, if I am thinking of numbers.

I feel that killing innocent children without any benefit is wrong. I reason about it, and within my normative system, it makes sense to believe that is absolute moral, and not just mere opinion.

I see through a telescope a bright spot in the sky. I think it is the planet Saturn. I reason about it and within my system of physical theories, it makes sense to believe that is absolute real, and not just mere opinion.

1) The fact that we do not have a near-universal agreement now does not mean that we won't have one in future. It also does not mean that there is no one correct answer.

2) What you are saying is that currently we are not very precise, or not as precise as natural science. That doesn't mean that we are not going to be closer to the correct answer in the future.

3a) Analogously, if we compare different viewpoints about the natural world and looks for the common, then there is also very little we can agree on. Maybe only on a few parameters like colour, form a... (read more)

I believe in an absolute moral system as much as I believe in the rules of mathematics and other ideas. We can debate whether ideas (or the physical reality for that matter) exist in the absence of a mind, but I guess that is not the point.

As long as we have values, desires, dislikes and make judgements (which all of us do and which maybe is a defining characteristic of the human being beyond the biological basics) and if we want to put these values into a logical consistent system, we have an absolute moral system.

So if I stop having any desires and sto... (read more)

As you know, there are different "valid" set of theories regarding the physical reality: the biblical view, the theories underlying TCM, the theories underlying homeopathy, the theories underlying chiropractise and the scientific view. The scientific view is well-established because there is an intersubjective consensus on the usefulness of the methodology.

The methods used in moral discussions are by far not so rigidly defined as in science, it's called civil discourse. The arguments must be logical consistent and the outcomes and conclusions of... (read more)

If I understand correctly what you are saying, then the answer is no.

Morality is the system of normative rules in contrast to the system of descriptive theories that we use to understand our physical world..

What form of evidence or argument would persuade you to change your mind on the usefulness/validity of falsification?

What form of evidence or argument would persuade you to change your mind on your understanding of the physical reality?

Well, the absolute moral system I meant does encompass everything, incl. AI and alien intelligence. It is true that different moral problems require different solutions, that is also true to physics. Objects in vacuum behave differently than in the atmosphere. Water behaves differently than ice, but they are all governed by the same physics, so I assume.

A similar problem may have a different solution if the situation is different. An Edo-ero samurai and a Wall Street banker may behave perfectly moral even if they act differently to the same problem due to... (read more)

The absolute moral system I am talking about is as "absolute" as the physical world. Our perception of the reality ("the absolute physical world") is also a primarily instinct that humans evolved to make life easier.

The difference between level 2 and level 3 intelligence is, using an analogy, like the difference between an intelligence that acts on postulated theories of the physical world and an intelligence that discovers new physical theories.

So you point is that I am wrong on bacteria. I agree, let's move on.

My post isn't supposed to be biologically accurate. Bacteria include a vast majority of organisms and I do them wrong if I depict them as crude and simple. As a part of my apology tour, I will start with my gut flora.

Replace "bacteria" with "secure hash algorithm".

I believe the problem is that while I believe in and presumed an absolute moral system, you don't.

Let's agree on a definition of morality/ethics, that it is what we should do to reach a desirable state or value, given that we both understand what "value" or "should" mean.

I think that morality exists as much as the physical world exist. If you believe that the physical reality is absolute, then there is no reason to doubt that there is a consistent absolute moral system. In our everyday life, we don't question the reality of the physical... (read more)

I fully agree. There are many aspects of intelligence.

The reason I choose this categorization, given it is valid, is to highlight the aspect of intelligence that is relevant to ethics.

I think only a level-3 intelligence can be a moral agent. An intelligence that has an innate goal does not need to and cannot bother itself with moral questions.

Well that's the point. The intelligence itself defines the criterion. Choosing goals presumes a degree of self-reflection that a paperclip maximizer does not have.

If a paperclip maximizer starts asking why it does what it does, then there are two possible outcomes. Either it realises that maximizing paperclips is required for a greater good, in which case it is not really a paperclip maximizer, but a "greater good" maximizer, and paperclip maximising isn't the end to itself.

Or it realises that paperclip maximising is absolutely pointless and ther... (read more)

Well, a paperclip maximizer has an identifiable goal. What is the identifiable goal of humans?

Well, "finding new algorithms" aka learning may itself be a kind of algorithm, but certainly of a higher-level than a simple algorithms aka instinct or reflex. I think there is a qualitative difference between an entity that cannot learn and an entity that can.