Indeed, invoking the words “good” or “right” also tend to make people dumber (though less so than “morality” or “ethics”), and trying to do philosophical analysis of what is “good” or “right” is exactly the thing which seems to insta-brain-kill people; it’s exactly the lever which “morality” and “ethics” pull.
For example, let’s look at two pages in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I picked these by pulling up the table of contents, and then clicking the first one which seemed not-very-morality-loaded and the first one which seemed very-morality-loaded.
First up, abduction. No morality talk here. It’s describing a feature of human reasoning, which seems functionally load-bearing for epistemics in some cases and would probably generalize to other kinds of minds (like aliens or AI). It doesn’t trivially fit a couple common frames of epistemics, which is why it’s interesting. A lot of the discussion is centered around pretty narrow or outdated models of reasoning, but it’s a technically interesting and sensible article, which inspires good questions at least.
In contrast, the ethics of abortion. Before we even get to the actual content, note the topic. Abduction is a topic relevant to understanding minds and reasoning in general, a topic which would likely be relevant even to AIs; it belongs in a generalizable world-model. Abortion, by contrast, would be irrelevant to many other kinds of minds—e.g. human-level-intelligent platypuses would lay eggs, and therefore the whole issue of abortion would not have a clean analogue for them. (And human-level intelligent ants would be in a whole different frame!) Almost certainly, the reason why a Stanford Encyclopedia page exists for abortion at all is that it was a major hot-button political topic for a while, which won the memetic competition for attention in US politics. But in the grand scheme of things, it is just not that important of a question at all even for humans, and entirely irrelevant to many other kinds of minds. The very fact that people pay so much attention to it is itself a strong sign of mindkill.
Looking at the content of the page… the entire thing is a string of analogies and attempts to generalize various heuristics to the case of abortion. Notably sparse or absent is:
Technical engagement with the developmental process, when various things come online for a fetus/baby (like e.g. pain, self-awareness).
Technical engagement with the way humans’ preferences/values actually typically form. Spoiler: it ain’t usually by thought-experiments involving a violinist.
Technical engagement with the first and second-order actual effects of abortion laws/norms (though laws/norms are of course distinct from morality, consequentialism still matters).
More vibe-ishly, compared to the abduction article, the whole thing very much has a bikeshed vibe to it. It’s all the sort of stuff which would make good fodder for conversation at a house party, not the sort of stuff which involves dense technical study and deep understanding.
Ok, I think I might see what you mean now; one might prefer framings in terms of alignment over morality, because moral framings might tend to provoke controversy, irrationality, or reactionary thinking.
Personally, I feel like I would still tend to prefer the moral framing, in terms of clarity and just plain accuracy. It does seem a little like the alignment framing is obfuscating a subject just to make it less provocative, when really, the subject is going to be provocative, no matter what, when you think about it deeply.
Quite the opposite: the subject-we-gesture-at-with-the-word-”alignment” is not particularly provocative or controversial when you think about it deeply, at least not along the axes people generally argue over in the context of morality/ethics, because those axes just aren’t that technically central or relevant.
Personally, my guess is that morality and ethics themselves would not be particularly controversial or provocative if people usually approached them with a goal of deep technical understanding. That’s just not the goal with which approximately-anybody, including nearly all professional philosophers, approaches the subject—as we see e.g. on that Stanford Encyclopedia page. Those are people trying to have the equivalent of fun house party conversations, or in some cases write manifestos, not people seriously trying to achieve deep technical understanding.
Philosophy is notable for the extent to which disagreements with respect to even those most basic questions persist among its most able practitioners, despite the fact that the arguments thought relevant to the disputed questions are typically well-known to all parties to the dispute. —Thomas Kelly
and I think about this framing a lot
Sometimes, you can answer philosophical questions with mountains of evidence, as with the example of moral motivation given above. But or many philosophical problems, overwhelming evidence simply isn’t available. Or maybe you can’t afford to wait a decade for definitive experiments to be done. Thus, “if you would rather not waste ten years trying to prove the wrong theory,” or if you’d like to get the right answer without overwhelming evidence, “you’ll need to [tackle] the vastly more difficult problem: listening to evidence that doesn’t shout in your ear.”
This is why philosophers need rationality training even more desperately than scientists do. Philosophy asks you to get the right answer without evidence that shouts in your ear. The less evidence you have, or the harder it is to interpret, the more rationality you need to get the right answer. (As likelihood ratios get smaller, your priors need to be better and your updates more accurate.)
I think it is a losing fight to attempt to get consensus on philosophical questions about meta-ethics, and agree with strongly avoiding such attempts when possible.
Indeed, invoking the words “good” or “right” also tend to make people dumber (though less so than “morality” or “ethics”), and trying to do philosophical analysis of what is “good” or “right” is exactly the thing which seems to insta-brain-kill people; it’s exactly the lever which “morality” and “ethics” pull.
For example, let’s look at two pages in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I picked these by pulling up the table of contents, and then clicking the first one which seemed not-very-morality-loaded and the first one which seemed very-morality-loaded.
First up, abduction. No morality talk here. It’s describing a feature of human reasoning, which seems functionally load-bearing for epistemics in some cases and would probably generalize to other kinds of minds (like aliens or AI). It doesn’t trivially fit a couple common frames of epistemics, which is why it’s interesting. A lot of the discussion is centered around pretty narrow or outdated models of reasoning, but it’s a technically interesting and sensible article, which inspires good questions at least.
In contrast, the ethics of abortion. Before we even get to the actual content, note the topic. Abduction is a topic relevant to understanding minds and reasoning in general, a topic which would likely be relevant even to AIs; it belongs in a generalizable world-model. Abortion, by contrast, would be irrelevant to many other kinds of minds—e.g. human-level-intelligent platypuses would lay eggs, and therefore the whole issue of abortion would not have a clean analogue for them. (And human-level intelligent ants would be in a whole different frame!) Almost certainly, the reason why a Stanford Encyclopedia page exists for abortion at all is that it was a major hot-button political topic for a while, which won the memetic competition for attention in US politics. But in the grand scheme of things, it is just not that important of a question at all even for humans, and entirely irrelevant to many other kinds of minds. The very fact that people pay so much attention to it is itself a strong sign of mindkill.
Looking at the content of the page… the entire thing is a string of analogies and attempts to generalize various heuristics to the case of abortion. Notably sparse or absent is:
Technical engagement with the developmental process, when various things come online for a fetus/baby (like e.g. pain, self-awareness).
Technical engagement with the way humans’ preferences/values actually typically form. Spoiler: it ain’t usually by thought-experiments involving a violinist.
Technical engagement with the first and second-order actual effects of abortion laws/norms (though laws/norms are of course distinct from morality, consequentialism still matters).
More vibe-ishly, compared to the abduction article, the whole thing very much has a bikeshed vibe to it. It’s all the sort of stuff which would make good fodder for conversation at a house party, not the sort of stuff which involves dense technical study and deep understanding.
Ok, I think I might see what you mean now; one might prefer framings in terms of alignment over morality, because moral framings might tend to provoke controversy, irrationality, or reactionary thinking.
Personally, I feel like I would still tend to prefer the moral framing, in terms of clarity and just plain accuracy. It does seem a little like the alignment framing is obfuscating a subject just to make it less provocative, when really, the subject is going to be provocative, no matter what, when you think about it deeply.
Quite the opposite: the subject-we-gesture-at-with-the-word-”alignment” is not particularly provocative or controversial when you think about it deeply, at least not along the axes people generally argue over in the context of morality/ethics, because those axes just aren’t that technically central or relevant.
Personally, my guess is that morality and ethics themselves would not be particularly controversial or provocative if people usually approached them with a goal of deep technical understanding. That’s just not the goal with which approximately-anybody, including nearly all professional philosophers, approaches the subject—as we see e.g. on that Stanford Encyclopedia page. Those are people trying to have the equivalent of fun house party conversations, or in some cases write manifestos, not people seriously trying to achieve deep technical understanding.
I want to link to Lukeprog’s classic LW essays on this subject, Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant, and Philosophy Needs to Trust Your Rationality Even Though It Shouldn’t. Two quotes from the latter:
and I think about this framing a lot
I think it is a losing fight to attempt to get consensus on philosophical questions about meta-ethics, and agree with strongly avoiding such attempts when possible.