Deontologists are common. Someday, you may need to convince a deontologist on some matter where their deontology affects their thinking. If you are ignorant about an important factor in how their mind works, you will be less able to bring their mind to a state that you desire.
I find this answer strange. There are lots of Christians, but we don’t do posts on Christian theology in case we might find it useful to understand the mind of a Christian in order to convince them to do something.
Come on, why did Alicorn write a post on deontology without giving any explanation why we should learn about it? What am I missing here? If she (or anyone else) thinks that we should put some weight into deontology in our moral beliefs, why not just come out and say that?
Well, apart from the fact that it looked like people wanted me to write it, I’m personally irritated by the background assumption of consequentialism on this site, especially since it usually seems to come from incomprehension more than anything else. People phrasing things more neutrally, or at least knowing exactly what it is they’re discarding, would be nice for me.
Thanks. I suggest that you write a bit about the context and motivation for a post in the post itself. I skipped most of the cryonics threads and never saw the parts where people talked about deontology, so your post was pretty bewildering to me (and to many others, judging from the upvotes my questions got).
I find this answer strange. There are lots of Christians, but we don’t do posts on Christian theology in case we might find it useful to understand the mind of a Christian in order to convince them to do something.
How often do you need to convince a Christian to do something where their Christianity in particular is important. That is, how often does it matter that their worldview is Christian specifically, rather than some other mysticism? The more often you need to do that, the more helpful it is to understand the Christian mindset specifically. But I can easily imagine that you will never need to do that.
In contrast, it seems much more likely that you will someday need to convince a deontologist to do something that they perceive as somehow involving duty. You will be better able to do that if you better understand how their concept of duty works.
The purpose of this site is to refine the art of human rationality. That requires knowing how humans are, and many humans are deontologists.
If there were something specific to Christianity that made certain techniques of rationality work on it and only it, then time spent understanding Christianity would be time well-spent. It seems to me, though, that general remedies, such as avoiding mysterious answers to mysterious questions, do as well as anything targeted specifically at Christianity. So it happens that there is little to be gained from discussing the particulars of the Christian worldview.
Deontology, however, seems more like the illusion of free will* than like Christianity. Deontology has something to do with how a large number of people conceive of human action at a very basic level. Part of refining human rationality is improving how humans conceive of their actions. Since so many of them conceive of their action deontologically, we should understand how deontology works.
*. . . the illusion of the illusory kind of free will, that is.
I’m pretty sure I remember a couple of comments suggesting this topic.
I can’t speak for alicorn but I’ll come out and say that I think the metaethics sequence is the weakest of the sequences and the widespread preference utilitarianism here has not been well justified. I’m not a deontologist but I think understanding the deontologist perspective will probably lead to less wrong thinking about ethics.
Deontologists are common. Someday, you may need to convince a deontologist on some matter where their deontology affects their thinking. If you are ignorant about an important factor in how their mind works, you will be less able to bring their mind to a state that you desire.
I find this answer strange. There are lots of Christians, but we don’t do posts on Christian theology in case we might find it useful to understand the mind of a Christian in order to convince them to do something.
Come on, why did Alicorn write a post on deontology without giving any explanation why we should learn about it? What am I missing here? If she (or anyone else) thinks that we should put some weight into deontology in our moral beliefs, why not just come out and say that?
Well, apart from the fact that it looked like people wanted me to write it, I’m personally irritated by the background assumption of consequentialism on this site, especially since it usually seems to come from incomprehension more than anything else. People phrasing things more neutrally, or at least knowing exactly what it is they’re discarding, would be nice for me.
Thanks. I suggest that you write a bit about the context and motivation for a post in the post itself. I skipped most of the cryonics threads and never saw the parts where people talked about deontology, so your post was pretty bewildering to me (and to many others, judging from the upvotes my questions got).
How often do you need to convince a Christian to do something where their Christianity in particular is important. That is, how often does it matter that their worldview is Christian specifically, rather than some other mysticism? The more often you need to do that, the more helpful it is to understand the Christian mindset specifically. But I can easily imagine that you will never need to do that.
In contrast, it seems much more likely that you will someday need to convince a deontologist to do something that they perceive as somehow involving duty. You will be better able to do that if you better understand how their concept of duty works.
The purpose of this site is to refine the art of human rationality. That requires knowing how humans are, and many humans are deontologists.
If there were something specific to Christianity that made certain techniques of rationality work on it and only it, then time spent understanding Christianity would be time well-spent. It seems to me, though, that general remedies, such as avoiding mysterious answers to mysterious questions, do as well as anything targeted specifically at Christianity. So it happens that there is little to be gained from discussing the particulars of the Christian worldview.
Deontology, however, seems more like the illusion of free will* than like Christianity. Deontology has something to do with how a large number of people conceive of human action at a very basic level. Part of refining human rationality is improving how humans conceive of their actions. Since so many of them conceive of their action deontologically, we should understand how deontology works.
*. . . the illusion of the illusory kind of free will, that is.
I’m pretty sure I remember a couple of comments suggesting this topic.
I can’t speak for alicorn but I’ll come out and say that I think the metaethics sequence is the weakest of the sequences and the widespread preference utilitarianism here has not been well justified. I’m not a deontologist but I think understanding the deontologist perspective will probably lead to less wrong thinking about ethics.
Yes, there was some enthusiasm about the topic here.