It’s hard to articulate why I dislike so much the views that change depending on what family you were born into (religion, nationalism, patriotism, etc.). It’s like priors of one, fallacy of favoring an arbitrary hypothesis, lack of stability of your views under self-changes as in AI alignment, floating beliefs, and what is not truly part of you, unrecoverable knowledge instead of a knowledge generator. And it seems that all these points are connected, which is why Yudkovsky wrote about them all when trying to teach the creation of safe AI. Well, just as Yudkovsky said in one of the chains “I’m sorry, the same person as me, just grew up in a different environment, and not a monster at all, so we are now forced to be at enmity,” I don’t like the idea that I would be at enmity with myself from a neighboring universe, simply because I was born in a Catholic family, and he was born in a Protestant one. Well, another view, even before lessvrong, that I do not like beliefs that are so unstable that if you were born in another country, you could never reliably come to them, that is, seriously, and this very important belief of yours rests on such flimsy birth fact? I mean, you don’t have any foundation of justifications under it, as you have under science. It’s just a random thing. Again, irretrievable knowledge, floating conviction. That you can’t pass anyone through arguments.
Though I don’t know why it wouldn’t apply to tastes let’s say. It probably doesn’t even apply. I’m not saying my tastes matter. It’s just a random fact. I will not try to prove to anyone that my tastes are better than everyone else, because it is not. It’s not true, it’s just a preference. And it cannot be said that I had a great reluctance to change them. Just any other will not be better. And it’s like my reluctance to lose my memory, because it’s a part of me.
Do you dislike the meta-view that an individual cares about their family more than they care about distant strangers? The specific family varies based on accident of birth, but the general assumption is close to universal.
How many of the views you dislike are of that form, and why are they different?
I didn’t quite understand what you mean. The family is not entirely relevant to the topic of that post. Usually it is treated somewhat more logically. And in the post, the conversation was more about beliefs than about duty. I am ready to pay the debt to the family or even the state, but only for what they really did good and partly how much it cost them, and not just for the fact of birth. “Honor your father” clearly does not deserve a place in the 20 commandments, because I was lucky, but my father could beat someone else. Your friends are not only just useful tools, you can also be grateful for what they have done in the past. But no unjustified unconditional love. Somewhere in here, it seems to be Scott Alexander, there was a chain where a person woke up in a virtual reality capsule in a world without a family, having failed his exam for excessive conformity. It largely reflects my views. It might make sense to prefer one’s home country/family/gender/race/species, all other things being equal, but obviously not if the other option gives MORE (if expressed in numbers, then this is certainly not 0.01%, but let’s say 3%).
More specifically, what I mean is that I find it extremely pointless to make something a moral value such as duty rather than a preference value such as taste if that attitude varies by region of birth. Which can probably be expressed as something like “I think it’s a mistake to list anything other than the direct conclusions of game theory in the list of moral values of duty.” Well, or else you can say that I believe that interpersonal relationships should not be regulated by someone’s personal preferences, only by ways of finding a strategy for the game to achieve the maximum total. Well, maybe it’s just a longer and more pompous way of saying “do not impose your preferences on others” or “the moral good for the other person should be determined by preferential utilitarianism.”
It’s hard to articulate why I dislike so much the views that change depending on what family you were born into (religion, nationalism, patriotism, etc.). It’s like priors of one, fallacy of favoring an arbitrary hypothesis, lack of stability of your views under self-changes as in AI alignment, floating beliefs, and what is not truly part of you, unrecoverable knowledge instead of a knowledge generator. And it seems that all these points are connected, which is why Yudkovsky wrote about them all when trying to teach the creation of safe AI. Well, just as Yudkovsky said in one of the chains “I’m sorry, the same person as me, just grew up in a different environment, and not a monster at all, so we are now forced to be at enmity,” I don’t like the idea that I would be at enmity with myself from a neighboring universe, simply because I was born in a Catholic family, and he was born in a Protestant one. Well, another view, even before lessvrong, that I do not like beliefs that are so unstable that if you were born in another country, you could never reliably come to them, that is, seriously, and this very important belief of yours rests on such flimsy birth fact? I mean, you don’t have any foundation of justifications under it, as you have under science. It’s just a random thing. Again, irretrievable knowledge, floating conviction. That you can’t pass anyone through arguments. Though I don’t know why it wouldn’t apply to tastes let’s say. It probably doesn’t even apply. I’m not saying my tastes matter. It’s just a random fact. I will not try to prove to anyone that my tastes are better than everyone else, because it is not. It’s not true, it’s just a preference. And it cannot be said that I had a great reluctance to change them. Just any other will not be better. And it’s like my reluctance to lose my memory, because it’s a part of me.
Do you dislike the meta-view that an individual cares about their family more than they care about distant strangers? The specific family varies based on accident of birth, but the general assumption is close to universal.
How many of the views you dislike are of that form, and why are they different?
I didn’t quite understand what you mean. The family is not entirely relevant to the topic of that post. Usually it is treated somewhat more logically. And in the post, the conversation was more about beliefs than about duty. I am ready to pay the debt to the family or even the state, but only for what they really did good and partly how much it cost them, and not just for the fact of birth. “Honor your father” clearly does not deserve a place in the 20 commandments, because I was lucky, but my father could beat someone else. Your friends are not only just useful tools, you can also be grateful for what they have done in the past. But no unjustified unconditional love. Somewhere in here, it seems to be Scott Alexander, there was a chain where a person woke up in a virtual reality capsule in a world without a family, having failed his exam for excessive conformity. It largely reflects my views. It might make sense to prefer one’s home country/family/gender/race/species, all other things being equal, but obviously not if the other option gives MORE (if expressed in numbers, then this is certainly not 0.01%, but let’s say 3%).
More specifically, what I mean is that I find it extremely pointless to make something a moral value such as duty rather than a preference value such as taste if that attitude varies by region of birth. Which can probably be expressed as something like “I think it’s a mistake to list anything other than the direct conclusions of game theory in the list of moral values of duty.” Well, or else you can say that I believe that interpersonal relationships should not be regulated by someone’s personal preferences, only by ways of finding a strategy for the game to achieve the maximum total. Well, maybe it’s just a longer and more pompous way of saying “do not impose your preferences on others” or “the moral good for the other person should be determined by preferential utilitarianism.”