From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Oct 07 1997 - 19:33:03 MDT
John K Clark wrote:
>
> Yet another problem, if "Objective Morality" really is objective then there
> should be some evidence of it in the non human world but we see none. If you
> gave me the job of designing the cruelest possible process for producing life
> and intelligence I could not come up with anything more horrible than
> evolution by random mutation and natural selection.
You lack imagination. :)
Seriously, objective morality wouldn't be a force pervading the Universe for
Good, just an objective method of labeling events "good" or "evil". Does the
existence of "objective cardinality" cause there to be more of things?
> I hope I don't come off sounding too cold hearted in all this, but if
> somebody claims to be able to prove OBJECTIVE morality then the game moves
> out of the gentle examining room of ethics and religion and into the harsh
> no holds barred arena of science, because objective facts is what science is
> good at. Like any theory it must be strong enough to survive brutal criticism,
> only the very toughest theories survive in science and I'm afraid objective
> morality is a dead duck.
I very strongly agree. Any person claiming that a given event has a given
objective ethical value is making a scientific claim, and must be able to
prove eir assertion by the rules of science. The statement that objective
morality exists is analogous to the statement that objective reality exists;
it is a precondition for scientific scrutiny. Guesses and speculations about
what the objective values are must meet the same standards as scientific speculation.
> That gives me an idea, suppose you're right and objective morality exists,
> and suppose you go to an alternate universe where it does not, how would
> things be the slightest bit different?
Suppose that objective cardinality exists. If you went to an alternate
Universe where numbers did not exist, how would things be the slightest bit different?
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> >Obviously "Objective Humor" isn't being defined as what causes the
> >neural events that I experience as laughter, but in some different
> >way.
>
> Obviously, and for that very reason it's equally obvious to me that whatever
> "Objective Humor" is defined to be it should have no interest to you.
Alternate conversation:
+> >Obviously "Objective Reality" isn't being defined as what causes the
+> >neural events that I experience as belief, but in some different
+> >way.
+>
+> Obviously, and for that very reason it's equally obvious to me that whatever
+> "Objective Reality" is defined to be it should have no interest to you.
> >Maybe there is such a thing as "Objective Humor"
>
> Well maybe objective humor does have a useful meaning, but just suppose it
> does not and I could prove it, would you then vow never to laugh again?
> I doubt it, and if I could prove that objective morality did not exist I very
> much doubt you would start pushing people into gas chambers.
Even if objective humor doesn't exist, I still find laughter pleasurable, and
conscious pleasure is one a plausible candidate for objective good. So you'd
also have to prove that pleasure was meaningless, as well as humor, before I
stopped laughing. Even then, laughing may contribute to my mental health,
which contributes to my efficiency, so you'd also have to prove my work (the
Singularity) meaningless, and in order to do that you'd have to disprove
objective morality.
> We could only conclude that his brain was working differently than that of
> most other people, not that one was right and one was wrong. Even if the
> brain was dead and starting to rot I can't think of any OBJECTIVE reason why
> it's inferior to a living healthy one, although I can think of lots of very
> powerful subjective ones.
Just because you can't think of something doesn't mean it isn't there. The
Earth orbited the Sun for centuries before anyone realized it was actually
moving in a straight line. I can't think of any OBJECTIVE reason why anything
exists, but that doesn't keep me from having this wild, ungrounded faith in
objective reality.
> Hey, the universe is not a democracy and we're not talking about a popularity
> contest. You've set a very high standard for yourself, determining objective
> fact, and that can't be done by a show of hands.
Not at all; I've set a very high standard for anyone arrogant enough to claim
eir particular system of ethics is superior. You should sympathize with this,
since you're always attacking those people. My ethical imperatives are all
interim solutions and are presented as such. Wouldn't the Universe be a much
nicer place if everyone else did the same?
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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