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What words like “right” and “should” mean; how to integrate moral concepts into a naturalistic universe.
The dependencies on this sequence may not be fully organized, and the post list does not have summaries. Yudkowsky considers this one of his less successful attempts at explanation.
This channel includes:
Followup to: Ghosts in the Machine, Fake Fake Utility Functions, Fake Utility Functions As people were complaining before about not seeing where the quantum ph
Followup to: The Design Space of Minds-in-General, Ghosts in the Machine, A Priori What is so terrifying about the idea that not every possible mind might agre
Followup to: The Mind Projection Fallacy, Variable Question Fallacy I have previously spoken of the ancient, pulp-era magazine covers that showed a bug-eyed monster carrying off a girl in a torn dress; and about how people think as if sexiness is an inherent property of a sexy entity, without dependence on the admirer.
Followup to: No Universally Compelling Arguments To those who say "Nothing is real," I once replied, "That's great, but how does the nothing work?" Suppose you
Followup to: What Would You Do Without Morality?, Something to Protect Once, discussing "horrible job interview questions" to ask candidates for a Friendly AI
Followup to: No Universally Compelling Arguments, Passing the Recursive Buck Lewis Carroll, who was also a mathematician, once wrote a short dialogue called What the Tortoise said to Achilles. If you have not yet read this ancient classic, consider doing so now.
Followup to: The Moral Void Three people, whom we'll call Xannon, Yancy and Zaire, are separately wandering through the forest; by chance, they happen upon a c
Followup to: The Bedrock of Fairness Discussions of morality seem to me to often end up turning around two different intuitions, which I might label morality-a
Followup to: Moral Complexities In the dialogue "The Bedrock of Fairness", I intended Yancy to represent morality-as-raw-fact, Zaire to represent morality-as-r
Continuation of: Is Morality Preference? (Disclaimer: Neither Subhan nor Obert represent my own position on morality; rather they represent different sides of
Followup to: No Universally Compelling Arguments, Passing the Recursive Buck, Wrong Questions, A Priori Why do I believe that the Sun will rise tomorrow? Becau
Followup to: Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom In " Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom", I concluded that it's okay to use induction to reason about the probability that induction will work in the future, given that it's worked in the past; or to use Occam's Razor to conclude that the simplest explanation for why Occam's Razor works is that the universe itself is fundamentally simple.
In lists of logical fallacies, you will find included "the genetic fallacy"-the fallacy attacking a belief, based on someone's causes for believing it. This is, at first sight, a very strange idea-if the causes of a belief do not determine its systematic reliability, what does?
Followup to: The Genetic Fallacy, Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom Yesterday I said that-because humans are not perfect Bayesians-the genetic fallacy
Followup to: Fundamental Doubts, Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, No Universally Compelling Arguments, Joy in the Merely Real, Evolutionary Psycholog
Followup to: Probability is in the Mind "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -Philip K. Dick There are two kinds o
Followup to: Is Morality Preference? In the dialogue "Is Morality Preference?", Obert argues for the existence of moral progress by pointing to free speech, de
Followup to: Thou Art Godshatter, Joy in the Merely Real, Is Morality Given?, Rebelling Within Nature How, oh how, did an unloving and mindless universe, coug
Followup to: Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, Rebelling Within Nature Years ago, Eliezer1999 was convinced that he knew nothing about morality. For a
Followup to: The Moral Void A widespread excuse for avoiding rationality is the widespread belief that it is "rational" to believe life is meaningless, and thu
Followup to: Probability is Subjectively Objective The classic explanation of counterfactuals begins with this distinction: If Lee Harvey Oswald didn't shoot J
Followup to: Probability is Subjectively Objective, Can Counterfactuals Be True? I am quite confident that the statement 2 + 3 = 5 is true; I am far less confi
Followup to: Math is Subjunctively Objective, The Moral Void, Is Morality Given? Thus I recall the study, though I cannot recall the citation: Children, at some relatively young age, were found to distinguish between: The teacher, by saying that we're allowed to stand on our desks, can make it right to do so.
Followup to: The Moral Void, Joy in the Merely Real, No Universally Compelling Arguments, Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, The Gift We Give To Tomorrow, Does Your Morality Care What You Think?, Existential Angst Factory, ... If you say, "Killing people is wrong," that's morality.
Followup to: Is Morality Given?, Is Morality Preference?, Moral Complexities, Could Anything Be Right?, The Bedrock of Fairness, ... Intuitions about morality
Continuation of: Changing Your Metaethics, Setting Up MetaethicsFollowup to: Does Your Morality Care What You Think?, The Moral Void, Probability is Subjectiv
Followup to: The Bedrock of Fairness Every time I wonder if I really need to do so much prep work to explain an idea, I manage to forget some minor thing and a
Followup to: The Meaning of Right Toby Ord commented: Eliezer, I've just reread your article and was wondering if this is a good quick summary of your positi
Followup to: The Meaning of Right I fear that in my drive for full explanation, I may have obscured the punchline from my theory of metaethics. Here then is an attempted rephrase: There is no pure ghostly essence of goodness apart from things like truth, happiness and sentient life.
Followup to: Anthropomorphic Optimism Once upon a time there was a strange little species-that might have been biological, or might have been synthetic, and pe
Followup to: Inseparably Right, Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps Richard Chappell, a pro, writes: "When Bob says "Abortion is wrong", and Sally says, "No it
Followup to: Morality as Fixed Computation I keep trying to describe morality as a "computation", but people don't stand up and say "Aha!" Pondering the surpri
Followup to: Inseparably Right; or, Joy in the Merely Good, Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps One of the experiences of following the Way is that, from time to time, you notice a new word that you have been using without really understanding. And you say: "What does this word, 'X', really mean?"
Followup to: The Bedrock of Fairness In "The Bedrock of Fairness", Xannon, Yancy, and Zaire argue over how to split up a pie that they found in the woods. Yan
Followup to: Is Fairness Arbitrary?, Joy in the Merely Good, Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps Yesterday, I presented the idea that when only five people are
Followup to: Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, Löb's Theorem Peano Arithmetic seems pretty trustworthy. We've never found a case where Peano Arithmetic proves a theorem T, and yet T is false in the natural numbers. That is, we know of no case where []T ("T is provable in PA") and yet ~T ("not T").
Followup to: You Provably Can't Trust Yourself Yesterday I discussed the difference between: A system that believes-is moved by-any specific chain of deduction
Followup to: Passing the Recursive Buck, No License To Be Human Roko has mentioned his "Universal Instrumental Values" several times in his comments. Roughly,