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Less Wrong: Metaethics

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:

  • 38 articles
  • Over 7.5 hours of audio narrated by Robert DeRoeck

Heading Toward Morality

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  1. Heading Toward Morality

    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

  2. No Universally Compelling Arguments

    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

  3. 2 Place And 1 Place Words

    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.

  4. What Would You Do Without Morality?

    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

  5. The Moral Void

    Followup to: What Would You Do Without Morality?, Something to Protect Once, discussing "horrible job interview questions" to ask candidates for a Friendly AI

  6. Created Already In Motion

    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.

  7. The Bedrock Of Fairness

    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

  8. Moral Complexities

    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

  9. Is Morality Preference?

    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

  10. Is Morality Given?

    Continuation of: Is Morality Preference? (Disclaimer: Neither Subhan nor Obert represent my own position on morality; rather they represent different sides of

  11. Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom

    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

  12. My Kind Of Reflection

    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.

  13. The Genetic Fallacy

    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?

  14. Fundamental Doubts

    Followup to: The Genetic Fallacy, Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom Yesterday I said that-because humans are not perfect Bayesians-the genetic fallacy

  15. Rebelling Within Nature

    Followup to: Fundamental Doubts, Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, No Universally Compelling Arguments, Joy in the Merely Real, Evolutionary Psycholog

  16. Probability Is Subjectively Objective

    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

  17. Whither Moral Progress?

    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

  18. The Gift We Give To Tomorrow

    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

  19. Could Anything Be Right?

    Followup to: Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, Rebelling Within Nature Years ago, Eliezer1999 was convinced that he knew nothing about morality. For a

  20. Existential Angst Factory

    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

  21. Can Counterfactuals Be True?

    Followup to: Probability is Subjectively Objective The classic explanation of counterfactuals begins with this distinction: If Lee Harvey Oswald didn't shoot J

  22. Math Is Subjunctively Objective

    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

  23. Does Your Morality Care What You Think?

    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.

  24. Changing Your Metaethics

    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.

  25. Setting Up Metaethics

    Followup to: Is Morality Given?, Is Morality Preference?, Moral Complexities, Could Anything Be Right?, The Bedrock of Fairness, ... Intuitions about morality

  26. The Meaning Of Right

    Continuation of: Changing Your Metaethics, Setting Up MetaethicsFollowup to: Does Your Morality Care What You Think?, The Moral Void, Probability is Subjectiv

  27. Interpersonal Morality

    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

  28. Morality As Fixed Computation

    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

  29. Inseparably Right; Or, Joy In The Merely Good

    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.

  30. Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps

    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

  31. Moral Error And Moral Disagreement

    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

  32. Abstracted Idealized Dynamics

    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

  33. "Arbitrary"

    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?"

  34. Is Fairness Arbitrary?

    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

  35. The Bedrock Of Morality: Arbitrary?

    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

  36. You Provably Can't Trust Yourself

    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").

  37. No License To Be Human

    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

  38. Invisible Frameworks

    Followup to: Passing the Recursive Buck, No License To Be Human Roko has mentioned his "Universal Instrumental Values" several times in his comments. Roughly,