When I first came across Eliezer’s writings, it struck me that what I read felt so true to me, that for the first time I felt like I had found someone I could relate to.
I have been avidly reading everything from him I could come across, as long as it “felt” right, which was often. With time I noticed that we didn’t think in the same way, and it felt to me Eliezer was much more rational, scientifical, structured, than I was.
I immediately felt that the desirable thing to do would be to read even more of him, so as to “absorb” those traits in me, which would be an advantage; as if reading again and again his writings would slowly diffuse a part of his thinking into me. I know I’m that suggestible, especially if I don’t put safeguards between people’s ideas and me.
And with time I have felt like a part of me was changing, that I was losing a bit of what made the good old “intuitive”, messy me, and gained some of what I identified as rationality, systematic reasoning.
Before I would be aloof, would oversimplify any problem, and would follow my any emotions knowing somehow they were right most of the time, and helped me win at what I did. With the knowledge I gained here, I couldn’t ever have that much confidence in my own raw drives and intuitions.
It sometimes feels like plugging incompatible software into my self, and messing the whole for as long as I possess both ways of thinking/feeling. But I think it is worth it, else I wouldn’t have done it.
“Would you kill babies if it was inherently the right thing to do? Yes [] No []”
-->
“Imagine that you wake up one morning and your left arm has been replaced by a blue tentacle. The blue tentacle obeys your motor commands—you can use it to pick up glasses, drive a car, etc. … How would I explain the event of my left arm being replaced by a blue tentacle? The answer is that I wouldn’t. It isn’t going to happen. ”
If morality was objective and it said we should kill babies, we’d have, and likely want to do it. Appears it isn’t objective, though, and that we just don’t feel that way. Another question ?