Society’s main story is that ethics are a choice...This story has implications:...
The list following the above helped me understand why deontological judgements are prevalent, even if I don’t find any strong arguments backing such theories (What do you mean, you don’t care about the outcomes of an action? What do you mean that something is “just ethically right”?) In particular:
Ethical judgements are different from utility judgements. Utility is a tool of reason, and reason only tells you how to get what you want, whereas ethics tells you what you ought to want (or what you ought to do, whether you want to or not). Therefore utility judgements, and utilitarians, are unethical.
Ethics (in that narrative’s view) is a domain of a non-reasoned, prescriptive behavior which is implicitly agreed as better being unreasoned about. Breaking that norm is a huge violation of ethics, and signals poorly for the breaker.
Voted up.
EDIT: Request for downvote explanation. Am I understanding incorrectly above, and if so, how? If not, what am I doing that’s disapproved? I was stating that the above narrative works for a chunk of non-LW culture and makes some useful predictions (such as why many of my consequentialist points have fallen on deaf ears to some local Catholics).
I didn’t downvote you; but generally, people downvote positions that they don’t like. Even on LessWrong.
What’s valuable, what I find I can learn from, is comments people make. The principal component of the down/up vote count on a post or a comment is how much what you said agrees with the dominant memes on LessWrong.
I don’t think this is true. Speaking for myself, I’ve upvote quite frequently comments I disagree with in part or in whole. For example, I upvoted Hyena’s remark here even though I disagreed with it. (In fact, further discussion strongly supported Hyena’s claim. But my upvote came before that discussion.)
I have a fair number of other examples of this.
I don’t think that I’m at all unique in this. I’ve made multiple comments about why I think AI going foom is unlikely and discussing what I consider to be serious problems with cryonics. Almost every single one has been upvoted sometimes quite highly.
I’ve heard that we are supposed to upvote something if we want to see more like it on LessWrong. And that seems like a good rule of thumb. I usually upvote a post or comment before replying to it, because that typically means it’s a subject I want more discussion on. And I comment more often when I have a disagreement, or at least feel that something’s been left out.
Why do you sometimes upvote comments that you disagree with? Do you mean comments that make statements you agree with in support of positions you disagree with?
I mean positions that I disagree with but make me think. This includes arguments that I had not considered that seem worthwhile to consider even if they aren’t persuasive, and posts where even if the conclusions are wrong use interesting facts that I wasn’t aware of, or posts that while I disagree with parts have other good points in them. Sometimes I will upvote a comment I disagree with simply because it is a demonstration of extreme civility in a highly controversial issue (so for example some of the recent discussions on gender issues I was impressed enough with the cordiality and thoughtfulness of people arguing different positions that I upvoted a lot of the comments).
In general, if a comment makes me think and makes me feel like reading it was a useful way to spend my time, I’ll upvote it.
Of all the votes I’ve given I don’t recall thinking my being hungry, or distracted, or etc. was a deciding factor, but those things are reasons as much as my sensible half-rationalizations that are also real reasons.
The list following the above helped me understand why deontological judgements are prevalent, even if I don’t find any strong arguments backing such theories (What do you mean, you don’t care about the outcomes of an action? What do you mean that something is “just ethically right”?) In particular:
Ethics (in that narrative’s view) is a domain of a non-reasoned, prescriptive behavior which is implicitly agreed as better being unreasoned about. Breaking that norm is a huge violation of ethics, and signals poorly for the breaker.
Voted up.
EDIT: Request for downvote explanation. Am I understanding incorrectly above, and if so, how? If not, what am I doing that’s disapproved? I was stating that the above narrative works for a chunk of non-LW culture and makes some useful predictions (such as why many of my consequentialist points have fallen on deaf ears to some local Catholics).
I didn’t downvote you; but generally, people downvote positions that they don’t like. Even on LessWrong.
What’s valuable, what I find I can learn from, is comments people make. The principal component of the down/up vote count on a post or a comment is how much what you said agrees with the dominant memes on LessWrong.
I don’t think this is true. Speaking for myself, I’ve upvote quite frequently comments I disagree with in part or in whole. For example, I upvoted Hyena’s remark here even though I disagreed with it. (In fact, further discussion strongly supported Hyena’s claim. But my upvote came before that discussion.)
I have a fair number of other examples of this.
I don’t think that I’m at all unique in this. I’ve made multiple comments about why I think AI going foom is unlikely and discussing what I consider to be serious problems with cryonics. Almost every single one has been upvoted sometimes quite highly.
I’ve heard that we are supposed to upvote something if we want to see more like it on LessWrong. And that seems like a good rule of thumb. I usually upvote a post or comment before replying to it, because that typically means it’s a subject I want more discussion on. And I comment more often when I have a disagreement, or at least feel that something’s been left out.
Why do you sometimes upvote comments that you disagree with? Do you mean comments that make statements you agree with in support of positions you disagree with?
I mean positions that I disagree with but make me think. This includes arguments that I had not considered that seem worthwhile to consider even if they aren’t persuasive, and posts where even if the conclusions are wrong use interesting facts that I wasn’t aware of, or posts that while I disagree with parts have other good points in them. Sometimes I will upvote a comment I disagree with simply because it is a demonstration of extreme civility in a highly controversial issue (so for example some of the recent discussions on gender issues I was impressed enough with the cordiality and thoughtfulness of people arguing different positions that I upvoted a lot of the comments).
In general, if a comment makes me think and makes me feel like reading it was a useful way to spend my time, I’ll upvote it.
Of all the votes I’ve given I don’t recall thinking my being hungry, or distracted, or etc. was a deciding factor, but those things are reasons as much as my sensible half-rationalizations that are also real reasons.