Eliezer is jousting with Immanuel Kant here, who believed that our rationality would lead us to a supreme categorical imperative, i.e. a bunch of “ought” statements with which everyone with a sufficiently advanced ability to reason would agree.
Kant is of course less than compelling. His “treat people as ends, not just means” is cryptic enough to sound cool but be meaningless. If interpreted to mean that one should weighs the desires of all rational minds equally (the end result of contemplating both passive and active actions as influencing the fulfillment of the desires of others), then it dissolves into utilitarianism.
Eliezer is jousting with Immanuel Kant here, who believed that our rationality would lead us to a supreme categorical imperative, i.e. a bunch of “ought” statements with which everyone with a sufficiently advanced ability to reason would agree.
Kant is of course less than compelling. His “treat people as ends, not just means” is cryptic enough to sound cool but be meaningless. If interpreted to mean that one should weighs the desires of all rational minds equally (the end result of contemplating both passive and active actions as influencing the fulfillment of the desires of others), then it dissolves into utilitarianism.