Kip_Werking
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The "problem" seems based on several assumptions:
I'm not sure any of these are true. Regarding 3, even if there is an X that is special, and that we should keep in the universe, I'm not sure "persons" is it. Maybe it is simpler: "pleasure-feeling-stuff" or "happiness-feeling-stuff." Even if there is a best state of the universe, I'm not sure that are any persons... (read more)
Michael Anissimov, August 14, 2008 at 10:14 PM asked me to expound.
Sure. I don't want to write smug little quips without explaining myself. Perhaps I'm wrong.
It's difficult to engage Eliezer in debate/argument, even in a constructive as opposed to adversarial way, because he writes so much material, and uses so many unfamiliar terms. So, my disagreement may just be based on an inadequate appreciation of his full writings (e.g. I don't read every word he posts on overcomingbias; although I think doing so would probably be good for my mind, and I eagerly look forward to reading any book he writes).
Let me just say that I'm a skeptic (or... (read 959 more words →)
I find Eliezer's seemingly-completely-unsupported belief in the rightness of human benevolence, as opposed to sorting pebbles, pretty scary.
"I can't abjure my own operating system."
We don't need to get into thorny issues involving free will and what you can or can't do.
Suffice it to say that something's being in our DNA is neither sufficient nor necessary for it to be moral. The tablet and our DNA are relevantly similar in this respect.
I should add: when discussing morality, I think it's important to give the anti-realist's position some consideration (which doesn't seem to happen in the post above). See Joshua Greene's The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It, and J.L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong.
As far as I can tell, Eliezer is concluding that he should trust part of his instincts about morality because, if he doesn't, then he won't know anything about it.
There are multiple arguments here that need to be considered:
If one doesn't know anything about morality, then that would be bad; I wanna know something about morality, therefore it's at least somewhat knowable. This argument is obviously wrong, when stated plainly, but there are hints of it in Eliezer's post.
If one doesn't know anything about morality, then that can't be morality, because morality is inherently knowable (or knowable by definition). But why is morality inherently knowable. I think one can
This is one of my favorite quotes (and one of only two I post on my facebook page, the other being "The way to love something is to realize that it might be lost", which is cited at the top of the scarcity chapter in Cialdini's Influence).
I'm not sure if I interpret it the same way as Schopenhauer (who was batsh** crazy as far as I can tell), but I take it to mean this:
Control bottoms out. In the race between A, "things influencing/determining how you decide/think/act" and B, "your control over these things that influence/determine how you decide/think/act", A will always win. The desire for infinite control, control that... (read 360 more words →)
I'm already convinced that nothing is right or wrong in the absolute sense most people (and religions) imply.
So what do I do? Whatever I want. Right now, I'm posting a comment to a blog. Why? Not because it's right. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it. I just want to.
"You might as well say that you can't possibly choose to run into the burning orphanage, because your decision was fully determined by the future fact that the child was saved."
I don't see how that even begins to follow from what I've said, which is just that the future is fixed2 before I was born. The fixed2 future might be that I choose to save the child, and that I do so. That is all consistent with my claim; I'm not denying that anyone chooses anything.
"If you are going to talk about causal structure, the present screens off the past."
If only that were true! Unfortunately, even non-specialists have no... (read more)
Note that there's a similar problem in the free will debate:
Incompatilist: "Well, if a godlike being can fix the entire life story of the universe, including your own life story, just by setting the rules of physics, and the initial conditions, then you can't have free will."
Compatibilist: "But in order to do that, the godlike being would have to model the people in the universe so well, that the models are people themselves. So there will still be un-modeled people living in a spontaneous way that wasn't designed by the godlike being. (And if you say that the godlike being models the models, too, the same problem arises in another... (read more)