From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jan 11 1999 - 10:07:47 MST
James Ganong wrote:
>
> I believe that rape, murder & genocide are wrong, but I cannot point to
> some Book & demand that sinners repent. At best I can point to economic
> analyses that show these things to be inefficient, but what are the odds
> that a rapist/murderer/genocide will be moved by such? I can only work
> to make a world where they are wrong because *we make it so*, just as we
> work to make our Transhuman/Extropian
> goals real.
Okay, the basic fallacy here is that anybody knows what the Objective
Morality is. I ain't got a clue. If I did, I wouldn't be building SIs
to clue me in, I'd be building them for quite different reasons.
The three rules of my philosophy, Externalism:
1. Morality is an objective, observer-independent reality external to
ourselves. Questions of right and wrong are questions of true and
false; there is no ontological distinction between "what is the mass of
this particle" and "what should I do now".
2. I don't know what the objective morality is and neither do you.
Anything we say on the subject is a guess, just like any other
scientific statement.
3. Since objective morality is real and external from our opinions, our
instincts can have no influence on it; thus objective morality is
probably as strange and unintuitive as quantum physics or general relativity.
> "There is no justice; just us."
> - Terry Pratchett, _Soul Music_
Spoken by Death. And if I, too, may quote:
"Are you too *scared* to change the world?"
Death turned. The very sight of his expression made Susan back away.
He advanced slowly toward her. His voice, when it came, was a hiss.
"YOU SAY THAT TO *ME*? YOU STAND THERE IN THAT PRETTY DRESS AND SAY
THAT TO *ME*? YOU? YOU PRATTLE ON ABOUT CHANGING THE WORLD? COULD YOU
FIND THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT IT? TO KNOW WHAT *MUST* *BE* *DONE* AND DO
IT, WHATEVER THE COST? IS THERE ONE HUMAN ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHO
KNOWS WHAT DUTY *MEANS*?"
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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