I didn’t get this impression from the article. I’m sure that some people read it as taking the moral superiority of our age for granted simply because they can’t imagine that someone smart and respectable could do otherwise. However, this seems like a very superficial and careless reading—the article clearly takes a dig at this feeling of superiority, claiming that it’s due to the same cognitive strategy that would have lead people in past ages to align with the prevailing values of their time. It doesn’t seem to me that the majority, let alone everyone, could have read it so negligently; the OB/LW audience is normally better than that.
read it as taking the moral superiority of our age for granted … this seems like a very superficial and careless reading
I think it’s an accurate reading. I think based on Eliezer’s other writings, he believes that, while modern morality is wrong on many points, on those issues where modern and ancient morality differ, it’s generally because moderns understand things that ancients did not.
I haven’t read all that he’s written on the topic, so it may be true for all I know. But I’d still be surprised and disappointed if he and other prominent participants here take for granted, for example, that one-person-one-vote democracy is a good idea for all places and times, which is given in the original article as one of the ideas that a proponent of modern values might want to transmit. (Of course, this is a widespread and high-status delusion nowadays, but the amount of evidence against it beats almost anything that’s normally considered superstitious.)
Thanks for the comment, I’ve edited the original statement based on the feedback.
I didn’t imply Eliezer thought that way in fact he implicitly lays the groundwork to question our currently held moral sensibilities by emphasising the need to look at the cognitive strategies that produce results.
“Everyone” was an exaggeration, not meant literally, put there in the spur of the moment to communicate my surprise that many did. Much more than I would have expected. Eliezer asked them to come up with cognitive strategies that would help Archimedes “win”, implicitly thus helping modern humanities odds of “winning” and serving as a good lesson about how the right answer can’t be conflated with the method of obtaining the right answer.
I didn’t get this impression from the article. I’m sure that some people read it as taking the moral superiority of our age for granted simply because they can’t imagine that someone smart and respectable could do otherwise. However, this seems like a very superficial and careless reading—the article clearly takes a dig at this feeling of superiority, claiming that it’s due to the same cognitive strategy that would have lead people in past ages to align with the prevailing values of their time. It doesn’t seem to me that the majority, let alone everyone, could have read it so negligently; the OB/LW audience is normally better than that.
I think it’s an accurate reading. I think based on Eliezer’s other writings, he believes that, while modern morality is wrong on many points, on those issues where modern and ancient morality differ, it’s generally because moderns understand things that ancients did not.
I haven’t read all that he’s written on the topic, so it may be true for all I know. But I’d still be surprised and disappointed if he and other prominent participants here take for granted, for example, that one-person-one-vote democracy is a good idea for all places and times, which is given in the original article as one of the ideas that a proponent of modern values might want to transmit. (Of course, this is a widespread and high-status delusion nowadays, but the amount of evidence against it beats almost anything that’s normally considered superstitious.)
Thanks for the comment, I’ve edited the original statement based on the feedback.
I didn’t imply Eliezer thought that way in fact he implicitly lays the groundwork to question our currently held moral sensibilities by emphasising the need to look at the cognitive strategies that produce results.
“Everyone” was an exaggeration, not meant literally, put there in the spur of the moment to communicate my surprise that many did. Much more than I would have expected. Eliezer asked them to come up with cognitive strategies that would help Archimedes “win”, implicitly thus helping modern humanities odds of “winning” and serving as a good lesson about how the right answer can’t be conflated with the method of obtaining the right answer.