From: Tim Hruby (hruby@his.com)
Date: Tue Mar 16 1999 - 17:35:19 MST
At 5:21 PM -0600 3/16/99, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Tim Hruby wrote:
> >
> > Thinking that a moral and poltical debate can be resolved by an item of
> > technical knowledge misses a great deal of the richness of human
>psychology.
>
> Yes, but it's *incorrect* human psychology. I mean, the old debate
> about whether the Earth went around the Sun incorporated the same overly
> "rich" psychology. I know perfectly well that the abortion debate
> represents ancient religious principles, overcompensation for centuries
> of hideous injustice, decades of partisanship, rationalization, fuzzy
> thinking, refusal to admit error, general hatred, and miscellaneous
> bickering. To perdition with it! If it can't be resolved by techical
> knowledge, I'm not interested.
You don't have to be interested. I agree with you -- I'm not interested in
getting either myself or Extropianism into the morality-of-abortion debate.
But, unlike your example of orbital motion, knowledge of moral "right and
wrong" is not currently empirical, and probably never will be. Empirical
knowledge explains (subject to revision, if you follow the scientific
method), but it doesn't guide. It is likely that the best empiricism will
ever come up with is outcome-optimizing strategies for action when faced
with a moral question. But empirical knowledge can't tell you which
optimized outcome to prefer. For example, do I permit ten "innocents" to
die to save my neck? That is a "moral" question that empirical knowledge
will probably never be able to help you with.
Empiricism doesn't make other forms of knowledge and experience
"incorrect." Your personal bias in favor of empirical knowledge is just
that, a personal bias. It is not the totality of human experience. The
"richness" of human psychology and experience is broader than empirical
knowledge. It is probably a rationally maximizing decision, based on your
personal utility function, to choose to limit and specialize yourself
within the general and diverse "richness" of human experience, but it is an
unjustified conceit (i.e., one lacking an empirical basis) to assume that
those who choose other specializations, who have other interests, or who
have other utility functions are "incorrect."
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