I don’t understand what you’re saying here. Do you think it’s impossible for aliens to exist that would want to impose their norms on us? Or, you’re saying that it was human!wrong of the humans in the story to consider meddling with the baby eaters? What position do you think Eliezer endorses that you disagree with?
The near-universal reaction of the crew to the baby-eaters customs is not just horror and disgust, but also the moral imperative to act to change them. It’s as if there existed a species-wide objective “species!wrong”, which is an untenable position, and, even less believably than that, as if there existed a “universal!meta-wrong” where anyone not adhering to your moral norms must be changed in some way to make it palatable (the super-happies are willing to go an extra mile to change themselves in their haste to fix things that are “wrong” with others).
This position is untenable because it would lead to constant internal infighting, as customs and morals naturally drift apart for a diverse enough society. Unless you impose a central moral authority and ruthlessly weed out all deviants.
I am not sure how much of the anti-prime-directive morality is endorsed by Eliezer personally, as opposed to merely being described by Eliezer the fiction writer.
In what sense is this position “untenable”? In the evolutionary sense (anyone who holds this position would go extinct) or in the logical sense (the position can be proved wrong)?
In evolution, there are two competing forces: on the one hand creating more conflict increases the probability to be destroyed, on the other hand imposing your norms on other groups obviously causes those norms to propagate more and thus makes them more evolutionary fit. For real humans in the real world, our history kind of is constant internal infighting.
If interpreted in the logical sense, I don’t think your argument makes sense: it seems like trying to derive an “ought” from an “is”.
Also, the actual distance between those diverging morals matters, and baby eating surely seems like an extreme example.
I don’t claim claim that leaving the Baby-eaters alone is necessarily we!wrong, but it is not obvious to me that it is we!right, and it is even less obvious that it doesn’t make sense to postulate a future human culture that would consider it right (especially that we already know it is supposed to be a “weird” culture by modern standards), much less an alien culture like the Super-Happies.
If interpreted in the logical sense, I don’t think your argument makes sense: it seems like trying to derive an “ought” from an “is”.
Hmm, in my reply to OP I expressed what the moral of the story is for me, and in my reply to you I tried to justify it by appealing to the expected stability of the species as a whole. The “ought”, if any, is purely utilitarian: to survive, a species has to be slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent.
Also, the actual distance between those diverging morals matters, and baby eating surely seems like an extreme example.
Uh. If you live in a city, there is a 99% chance that there is little girl within a mile from you being raped and tortured by her father/older brother daily for their own pleasure, yet no effort is made to find and save her. I don’t find the babyeaters’ morals all that divergent from human, at least the babyeaters had a justification for their actions based on the need for the whole species to survive.
I don’t claim claim that leaving the Baby-eaters alone is necessarily we!wrong, but it is not obvious to me that it is we!right
My point is that there is no universal we!right and we!wrong in the first place, yet the story was constructed on this premise, which led to the whole species being hoisted on its own petard.
it is supposed to be a “weird” culture by modern standards), much less an alien culture like the Super-Happies
Oh. It never struck me as weird, let alone alien. The babyeaters are basically Spartans and the super-happies are hedonists.
The “ought”, if any, is purely utilitarian: to survive, a species has to be slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent.
I still don’t understand, is your claim descriptive or prescriptive?
If you live in a city, there is a 99% chance that there is little girl within a mile from you being raped and tortured by her father/older brother daily for their own pleasure, yet no effort is made to find and save her.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here at all. Obviously we have laws against rape, and these laws are enforced, although ofc there are perpetrators that don’t get caught. The reason these things still happen is clearly not because we, as a species, are tolerant towards different moralities.
My point is that there is no universal we!right and we!wrong in the first place, yet the story was constructed on this premise, which led to the whole species being hoisted on its own petard.
“Universal we!right” is a contradiction in terms. The reason I added “we” there is because I am talking about our* values, not “universal” values. I agree that there are no universal values. Moreover it seems clear to me that, contrary to your claim, the premise of the story is precisely that there are no universal values. But maybe I just don’t understand what you’re saying here.
*I was vague about who exactly is “we”, but feel free to draw the line around the participants of this conversation anywhere you want. Strictly speaking, each person probably has somewhat different values, but in a given debate about ethics there might be hope that the participants can come to a consensus. Indeed, if we did not believe there was such hope in this conversation then there would be no point having it (at least, to the extent the debate is prescriptive rather than descriptive, which I am not sure about atm).
I still don’t understand, is your claim descriptive or prescriptive?
Neither… Or maybe descriptive? I am simply stating the implication, not prescribing what to do.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here at all.
Yes, we do have plenty of laws, but no one goes out of their way to find and hunt down the violators. If anything, the more horrific something is, the more we try to pretend it does not exist. You can argue and point at the law enforcement, whose job it is, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that you can sleep soundly at night ignoring what is going on somewhere not far from you, let alone in the babyeaters’ world.
“Universal we!right” is a contradiction in terms.
We may have not agreed on the meaning. I meant “human universal” not some species-independent morality.
in a given debate about ethics there might be hope that the participants can come to a consensus
I find it too optimistic a statement for a large “we”. The best one can hope for is that logical people can agree with an implication like “given this set of values, this is the course of action someone holding these values ought to take to stay consistent”, without necessarily agreeing with the set of values themselves. In that sense, again, it’s describes self-consistent behaviors without privileging a specific one.
In general, it feels like this comment thread has failed to get to the crux of the disagreement, and I am not sure if anything can be done about it, at least without using a more interactive medium.
Vigilantism has been found to be lacking. If I wanted to help with that problem in particular I’d become a cop, or vote for politicians to put higher priority on it. That seems directly comparable to what the humans in the story intended to do for most of it.
What the baby eaters are doing is worst by most people’s standards than anything in our history. At least if scale counts for something. Humans don’t even need a shared utility function. There just needs to be a cluster around what most people would reflectively endource. Paperclip maximizers might fight each other over the exact definition, but a pencil maximizer is clearly not helping by any of their standards.
Also the baby eaters aren’t Spartans. If you gave the Spartans a cure all for birth defects, they would stop killing their kids, and certainly wouldn’t complain about cure.
I still don’t understand, is your claim descriptive or prescriptive?
Neither… Or maybe descriptive? I am simply stating the implication, not prescribing what to do.
Then I don’t understand what you’re saying at all. If you are stating an implication, then I don’t understand (i) what exactly is the premise (ii) what exactly is the conclusion (iii) how is this implication violated in the story Three World Collide.
Yes, we do have plenty of laws, but no one goes out of their way to find and hunt down the violators.
So, your argument is (correct me if I’m wrong): in the real world people only put that much effort into hunting down criminals, therefore it is unrealistic that in the story the people put so much effort into thinking what to do with the Baby-eaters. I am not convinced. In the real world, you need to allocate your limited resources between many problems you need to deal with. The Baby-eaters are a heretofore unknown problem on a huge scale (possibly dwarfing all human criminality), so it makes perfect sense the protagonists would put a lot of effort into dealing with it. Moreover, we are talking about a future humanity in which there is much less violent crime (IIRC this is stated explicitly in the story) and people are much more sensitive to ethical issues.
I meant “human universal” not some species-independent morality.
I don’t think the story obviously postulates a human universal morality. It only implies that many people living at the same time period have similar views on certain ethical questions, which doesn’t strike me as unrealistic?
In general, it feels like this comment thread has failed to get to the crux of the disagreement, and I am not sure if anything can be done about it, at least without using a more interactive medium.
Well, if you feel this is not productive we can stop?
It’s frustrating where an honest exchange fails to achieve any noticeable convergence… Might try once more and if not, well, Aumann does not apply here, anyhow.
My main point: “to survive, a species has to be slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent”. I am not sure if this is the disagreement, maybe you think that it’s not a valid implication (and by implication I mean the converse, “intolerant ⇒ stunted”).
If I understood correctly, your objection to Three Worlds Collide is (mostly?) descriptive rather than prescriptive: you think the story is unrealistic, rather than dispute some normative position that you believe it defends. However, depending on the interpretation of that maxim you formulated, it is (IMO) either factually wrong or entirely consistent with the story of Three Worlds Collide.
Do you believe real world humans are “slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent”? If your answer is positive, how do you explain all (often extremely violent) conflicts over religion and political ideology over the course of human history? Whatever explanation you propose to these conflicts, what prevents it from explaining the conflict with the Baby-Eaters described in Three Worlds Collide? If your answer to the first question is negative, how do you explain the survival of the human species so far? Whatever explanation you provide to this survival, what prevents it from explaining the continued survival of the human species until the imaginary future in the story?
If I understood correctly, your objection to Three Worlds Collide is (mostly?) descriptive rather than prescriptive: you think the story is unrealistic, rather than dispute some normative position that you believe it defends.
I am not a moral realist, so I cannot dispute someone else’s morals, even if I don’t relate to them, as long as they leave me alone. So, yes, descriptive, and yes, I find the story a great read, but that particular element, moral expansionism, does not match the implied cohesiveness of the multi-world human species.
Do you believe real world humans are “slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent”?
Yes. Definitely.
how do you explain all (often extremely violent) conflicts over religion and political ideology over the course of human history?
Generally, economic or some other interests in disguise. Like distracting the populous from the internal issues. You can read up on the reasons behind the Crusades, the Holocaust, etc. You can also notice that when the morals lead the way, extreme religious zealotry leads to internal instability, like the fractures inside Christianity and Islam. So, my model that you call “factually wrong” seems to fit the observations rather well, though I’m sure not perfectly.
Whatever explanation you provide to this survival, what prevents it from explaining the continued survival of the human species until the imaginary future in the story?
My point is that humans are behaviorally both much more and much less tolerant of the morals they find deviant than they profess. In the story I would have expected humans to express extreme indignation over babyeaters’ way of life, but do nothing about it beyond condemnation.
Alright, now I finally understand your claim. I still disagree with it: I think that your cynicism about human motivations is unsupported by evidence. But, that’s not a debate I’m interested to start atm. Thank you for explaining your views.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here. Do you think it’s impossible for aliens to exist that would want to impose their norms on us? Or, you’re saying that it was human!wrong of the humans in the story to consider meddling with the baby eaters? What position do you think Eliezer endorses that you disagree with?
The near-universal reaction of the crew to the baby-eaters customs is not just horror and disgust, but also the moral imperative to act to change them. It’s as if there existed a species-wide objective “species!wrong”, which is an untenable position, and, even less believably than that, as if there existed a “universal!meta-wrong” where anyone not adhering to your moral norms must be changed in some way to make it palatable (the super-happies are willing to go an extra mile to change themselves in their haste to fix things that are “wrong” with others).
This position is untenable because it would lead to constant internal infighting, as customs and morals naturally drift apart for a diverse enough society. Unless you impose a central moral authority and ruthlessly weed out all deviants.
I am not sure how much of the anti-prime-directive morality is endorsed by Eliezer personally, as opposed to merely being described by Eliezer the fiction writer.
In what sense is this position “untenable”? In the evolutionary sense (anyone who holds this position would go extinct) or in the logical sense (the position can be proved wrong)?
In evolution, there are two competing forces: on the one hand creating more conflict increases the probability to be destroyed, on the other hand imposing your norms on other groups obviously causes those norms to propagate more and thus makes them more evolutionary fit. For real humans in the real world, our history kind of is constant internal infighting.
If interpreted in the logical sense, I don’t think your argument makes sense: it seems like trying to derive an “ought” from an “is”.
Also, the actual distance between those diverging morals matters, and baby eating surely seems like an extreme example.
I don’t claim claim that leaving the Baby-eaters alone is necessarily we!wrong, but it is not obvious to me that it is we!right, and it is even less obvious that it doesn’t make sense to postulate a future human culture that would consider it right (especially that we already know it is supposed to be a “weird” culture by modern standards), much less an alien culture like the Super-Happies.
Re “tenability”, today’s SMBC captures it well: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/multiplanetary
Hmm, in my reply to OP I expressed what the moral of the story is for me, and in my reply to you I tried to justify it by appealing to the expected stability of the species as a whole. The “ought”, if any, is purely utilitarian: to survive, a species has to be slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent.
Uh. If you live in a city, there is a 99% chance that there is little girl within a mile from you being raped and tortured by her father/older brother daily for their own pleasure, yet no effort is made to find and save her. I don’t find the babyeaters’ morals all that divergent from human, at least the babyeaters had a justification for their actions based on the need for the whole species to survive.
My point is that there is no universal we!right and we!wrong in the first place, yet the story was constructed on this premise, which led to the whole species being hoisted on its own petard.
Oh. It never struck me as weird, let alone alien. The babyeaters are basically Spartans and the super-happies are hedonists.
I still don’t understand, is your claim descriptive or prescriptive?
I don’t understand what you’re saying here at all. Obviously we have laws against rape, and these laws are enforced, although ofc there are perpetrators that don’t get caught. The reason these things still happen is clearly not because we, as a species, are tolerant towards different moralities.
“Universal we!right” is a contradiction in terms. The reason I added “we” there is because I am talking about our* values, not “universal” values. I agree that there are no universal values. Moreover it seems clear to me that, contrary to your claim, the premise of the story is precisely that there are no universal values. But maybe I just don’t understand what you’re saying here.
*I was vague about who exactly is “we”, but feel free to draw the line around the participants of this conversation anywhere you want. Strictly speaking, each person probably has somewhat different values, but in a given debate about ethics there might be hope that the participants can come to a consensus. Indeed, if we did not believe there was such hope in this conversation then there would be no point having it (at least, to the extent the debate is prescriptive rather than descriptive, which I am not sure about atm).
Neither… Or maybe descriptive? I am simply stating the implication, not prescribing what to do.
Yes, we do have plenty of laws, but no one goes out of their way to find and hunt down the violators. If anything, the more horrific something is, the more we try to pretend it does not exist. You can argue and point at the law enforcement, whose job it is, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that you can sleep soundly at night ignoring what is going on somewhere not far from you, let alone in the babyeaters’ world.
We may have not agreed on the meaning. I meant “human universal” not some species-independent morality.
I find it too optimistic a statement for a large “we”. The best one can hope for is that logical people can agree with an implication like “given this set of values, this is the course of action someone holding these values ought to take to stay consistent”, without necessarily agreeing with the set of values themselves. In that sense, again, it’s describes self-consistent behaviors without privileging a specific one.
In general, it feels like this comment thread has failed to get to the crux of the disagreement, and I am not sure if anything can be done about it, at least without using a more interactive medium.
Vigilantism has been found to be lacking. If I wanted to help with that problem in particular I’d become a cop, or vote for politicians to put higher priority on it. That seems directly comparable to what the humans in the story intended to do for most of it.
What the baby eaters are doing is worst by most people’s standards than anything in our history. At least if scale counts for something. Humans don’t even need a shared utility function. There just needs to be a cluster around what most people would reflectively endource. Paperclip maximizers might fight each other over the exact definition, but a pencil maximizer is clearly not helping by any of their standards.
Also the baby eaters aren’t Spartans. If you gave the Spartans a cure all for birth defects, they would stop killing their kids, and certainly wouldn’t complain about cure.
Then I don’t understand what you’re saying at all. If you are stating an implication, then I don’t understand (i) what exactly is the premise (ii) what exactly is the conclusion (iii) how is this implication violated in the story Three World Collide.
So, your argument is (correct me if I’m wrong): in the real world people only put that much effort into hunting down criminals, therefore it is unrealistic that in the story the people put so much effort into thinking what to do with the Baby-eaters. I am not convinced. In the real world, you need to allocate your limited resources between many problems you need to deal with. The Baby-eaters are a heretofore unknown problem on a huge scale (possibly dwarfing all human criminality), so it makes perfect sense the protagonists would put a lot of effort into dealing with it. Moreover, we are talking about a future humanity in which there is much less violent crime (IIRC this is stated explicitly in the story) and people are much more sensitive to ethical issues.
I don’t think the story obviously postulates a human universal morality. It only implies that many people living at the same time period have similar views on certain ethical questions, which doesn’t strike me as unrealistic?
Well, if you feel this is not productive we can stop?
It’s frustrating where an honest exchange fails to achieve any noticeable convergence… Might try once more and if not, well, Aumann does not apply here, anyhow.
My main point: “to survive, a species has to be slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent”. I am not sure if this is the disagreement, maybe you think that it’s not a valid implication (and by implication I mean the converse, “intolerant ⇒ stunted”).
If I understood correctly, your objection to Three Worlds Collide is (mostly?) descriptive rather than prescriptive: you think the story is unrealistic, rather than dispute some normative position that you believe it defends. However, depending on the interpretation of that maxim you formulated, it is (IMO) either factually wrong or entirely consistent with the story of Three Worlds Collide.
Do you believe real world humans are “slow to act against the morals it finds abhorrent”? If your answer is positive, how do you explain all (often extremely violent) conflicts over religion and political ideology over the course of human history? Whatever explanation you propose to these conflicts, what prevents it from explaining the conflict with the Baby-Eaters described in Three Worlds Collide? If your answer to the first question is negative, how do you explain the survival of the human species so far? Whatever explanation you provide to this survival, what prevents it from explaining the continued survival of the human species until the imaginary future in the story?
I am not a moral realist, so I cannot dispute someone else’s morals, even if I don’t relate to them, as long as they leave me alone. So, yes, descriptive, and yes, I find the story a great read, but that particular element, moral expansionism, does not match the implied cohesiveness of the multi-world human species.
Yes. Definitely.
Generally, economic or some other interests in disguise. Like distracting the populous from the internal issues. You can read up on the reasons behind the Crusades, the Holocaust, etc. You can also notice that when the morals lead the way, extreme religious zealotry leads to internal instability, like the fractures inside Christianity and Islam. So, my model that you call “factually wrong” seems to fit the observations rather well, though I’m sure not perfectly.
My point is that humans are behaviorally both much more and much less tolerant of the morals they find deviant than they profess. In the story I would have expected humans to express extreme indignation over babyeaters’ way of life, but do nothing about it beyond condemnation.
Alright, now I finally understand your claim. I still disagree with it: I think that your cynicism about human motivations is unsupported by evidence. But, that’s not a debate I’m interested to start atm. Thank you for explaining your views.