That all sounds fine, if we’re engaged in a pragmatic project for deciding what to do, and want to propose an answer that you and I can get behind, and that lots of people around the world can also get behind.
I think Arjun is (rightly) complaining about something different, namely that Eliezer and you and others frequently slip into treating this answer as being fundamentally privileged / “Right”, as opposed to merely a pragmatic option that you and I and lots of people can get behind.
E.g. here’s Nate referring to “the future’s potential value”, as if there’s a metric for that which is canonical and characteristic of humanity-as-a-whole. I think that’s moral-realist (or “crypto”-moral-realist) thinking, sneaking in.
Hmm, I don’t really get this. Or like, I am about as sympathetic to this argument as someone saying “E.g. here’s Nate referring to ‘the future’ as a thing that exists, as if there is consensus on there being a single reality and arrow of time. I think that’s scientific materialist thinking sneaking in, denying the possibility of solipsism or simulationism”. To which my reaction is “yes, metaphysics is actually quite confusing, but come on man, you know what I mean, in as much as words mean anything, this is a fine use of them”.
Similarly here, my reaction is: “Come on man, you know what Nate means. In as much as ‘preferences’ mean anything, there is an up-direction for humanity as a whole, and a down-direction for humanity as a whole, even without any kind of substantial convergence, given how far away we are from the Pareto frontier from anything”.
That all sounds fine, if we’re engaged in a pragmatic project for deciding what to do, and want to propose an answer that you and I can get behind, and that lots of people around the world can also get behind.
I think Arjun is (rightly) complaining about something different, namely that Eliezer and you and others frequently slip into treating this answer as being fundamentally privileged / “Right”, as opposed to merely a pragmatic option that you and I and lots of people can get behind.
E.g. here’s Nate referring to “the future’s potential value”, as if there’s a metric for that which is canonical and characteristic of humanity-as-a-whole. I think that’s moral-realist (or “crypto”-moral-realist) thinking, sneaking in.
Hmm, I don’t really get this. Or like, I am about as sympathetic to this argument as someone saying “E.g. here’s Nate referring to ‘the future’ as a thing that exists, as if there is consensus on there being a single reality and arrow of time. I think that’s scientific materialist thinking sneaking in, denying the possibility of solipsism or simulationism”. To which my reaction is “yes, metaphysics is actually quite confusing, but come on man, you know what I mean, in as much as words mean anything, this is a fine use of them”.
Similarly here, my reaction is: “Come on man, you know what Nate means. In as much as ‘preferences’ mean anything, there is an up-direction for humanity as a whole, and a down-direction for humanity as a whole, even without any kind of substantial convergence, given how far away we are from the Pareto frontier from anything”.