If it isn’t worth trying to persuade (whoever), he shouldn’t have commented in the first place. There are -lots- of posts that go through Less Wrong. -That- one bothered him. Bothered him on a fundamental level.
As it was intended to.
I’ll note that it bothered you too. It was intended to.
And the parallel is… apt, although probably not in the way that you think. I’m not Dumbledore, in this parallel.
As for his question? It’s not meant for me. I wouldn’t agonize over the choice, and no matter what decision I made, I wouldn’t feel bad about it afterwards. I have zero issue considering the hypothetical, and find it an inelegant and blunt way of pitting two moral absolutes against one another in an attempt to force somebody else to admit to an ethical hierarchy. The fact that Eliezer himself described the baby eater hypothetical as one which must be fought is the intellectual equivalent to mining the road and running away; he, as far as I know, -invented- that hypothetical, he’s the one who set it up as the ultimate butcher block for non-utilitarian ethical systems.
“Some hypotheticals must be fought”, in this context, just means “That hypothetical is dangerous”. It isn’t, really. It just requires giving up a single falsehood:
That knowing the truth always makes you better off. That that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
He already implicitly accepts that lesson; his endless fiction of secret societies keeping dangerous knowledge from the rest of society demonstrate this. The truth doesn’t always make things better. The truth is a very amoral creature; it doesn’t care if things are made better, or worse, it just is. To call -that- a dangerous idea is just stubbornness.
Not to say there -isn’t- danger in that post, but it is not, in fact, from the hypothetical.
We may disagree about what it means to “disagree”.
Eliezer’s complete response to your original posting was:
Would you kill babies if it was intrinsically the right thing to do? If not, under what other circumstances would you not do the right thing to do? If yes, how right would it have to be, for how many babies?
EDIT IN RESPONSE: My intended point had been that sometimes you do have to fight the hypothetical.
This, you take as evidence that he is “bothered on a fundamental level”, and you imply that this being “bothered on a fundamental level”, whatever that is, is evidence that he is wrong and should just give up the “simple falsehood” that truth is desirable.
This is argument by trying to bother people and claiming victory when you judge them to be bothered.
Since my argument in this case is that people can be “bothered”, then yes, it would be a victory.
However, since as far as I know Eliezer didn’t claim to be “unbotherable”, that doesn’t make Eliezer wrong, at least within the context of that discussion. Eliezer didn’t disagree with me, he simply refused the legitimacy of the hypothetical.
If it isn’t worth trying to persuade (whoever), he shouldn’t have commented in the first place. There are -lots- of posts that go through Less Wrong. -That- one bothered him. Bothered him on a fundamental level.
As it was intended to.
I’ll note that it bothered you too. It was intended to.
And the parallel is… apt, although probably not in the way that you think. I’m not Dumbledore, in this parallel.
As for his question? It’s not meant for me. I wouldn’t agonize over the choice, and no matter what decision I made, I wouldn’t feel bad about it afterwards. I have zero issue considering the hypothetical, and find it an inelegant and blunt way of pitting two moral absolutes against one another in an attempt to force somebody else to admit to an ethical hierarchy. The fact that Eliezer himself described the baby eater hypothetical as one which must be fought is the intellectual equivalent to mining the road and running away; he, as far as I know, -invented- that hypothetical, he’s the one who set it up as the ultimate butcher block for non-utilitarian ethical systems.
“Some hypotheticals must be fought”, in this context, just means “That hypothetical is dangerous”. It isn’t, really. It just requires giving up a single falsehood:
That knowing the truth always makes you better off. That that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
He already implicitly accepts that lesson; his endless fiction of secret societies keeping dangerous knowledge from the rest of society demonstrate this. The truth doesn’t always make things better. The truth is a very amoral creature; it doesn’t care if things are made better, or worse, it just is. To call -that- a dangerous idea is just stubbornness.
Not to say there -isn’t- danger in that post, but it is not, in fact, from the hypothetical.
Ah. People disagreeing prove you right.
We may disagree about what it means to “disagree”.
Eliezer’s complete response to your original posting was:
This, you take as evidence that he is “bothered on a fundamental level”, and you imply that this being “bothered on a fundamental level”, whatever that is, is evidence that he is wrong and should just give up the “simple falsehood” that truth is desirable.
This is argument by trying to bother people and claiming victory when you judge them to be bothered.
Since my argument in this case is that people can be “bothered”, then yes, it would be a victory.
However, since as far as I know Eliezer didn’t claim to be “unbotherable”, that doesn’t make Eliezer wrong, at least within the context of that discussion. Eliezer didn’t disagree with me, he simply refused the legitimacy of the hypothetical.