I often observe with people that we don’t all share the same meaning for the word, and that the discrepancy is significant.
YES! This is the study of ethics, I think: “by what rules can we generate an ideal society?”
Do we have a shared meaning for this word?
NO!
This is why ethical formalisms have historically been so problematic.
Overconfident projections of value based on proxies that are extrapolated way out of their region of relevance (generally in the service of “legibility”) is the root cause of so much avoidable suffering: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/
This hits fairly close to home in the rest of the tech industry as our proxies are stressed way beyond their rated capacity: http://timewellspent.io and http://nxhx.org/maximizing/
Moreover, even if we did nail it at one point in time, this thing called “ideal” drifts with progress, see also “value drift”.
Will Buckingham suggests that simply sharing stories is the most responsible way forward in https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Our-Sea-legs-Experience-Stories/dp/1899999485 -- digested ad nauseum by https://meaningness.com/
I hope these citations are convincing. Let’s continue to talk about what’s ideal, but once we throw in underneath some god-value-proxy, we’re just as screwed as if we gave up on CEV.
YES! This is the study of ethics, I think: “by what rules can we generate an ideal society?”
NO!
This is why ethical formalisms have historically been so problematic.
Overconfident projections of value based on proxies that are extrapolated way out of their region of relevance (generally in the service of “legibility”) is the root cause of so much avoidable suffering: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/
This hits fairly close to home in the rest of the tech industry as our proxies are stressed way beyond their rated capacity: http://timewellspent.io and http://nxhx.org/maximizing/
Moreover, even if we did nail it at one point in time, this thing called “ideal” drifts with progress, see also “value drift”.
Will Buckingham suggests that simply sharing stories is the most responsible way forward in https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Our-Sea-legs-Experience-Stories/dp/1899999485 -- digested ad nauseum by https://meaningness.com/
I hope these citations are convincing. Let’s continue to talk about what’s ideal, but once we throw in underneath some god-value-proxy, we’re just as screwed as if we gave up on CEV.