[SEQ RERUN] Passing the Recursive Buck

[MinibearRex]

Today’s post, Passing the Recursive Buck was originally published on 16 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

When confronted with a difficult question, don’t try to point backwards to a misunderstood black box. Ask yourself, what’s inside the black box? If the answer is another black box, you likely have a problem.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Ultimate Source, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

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Empathy and duty overpowered fear and selfishness—that was the choice. It may be that no one factor was decisive, but all of them together are you just as much as you are your brain. You did not choose for heroic factors to overpower antiheroic ones; that overpowering was your choice. Or else where did the meta-choice to favor heroic factors come from?

This is like Euthypro’s Dilemma applied to oneself. I like it.

http://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Euthyphro_dilemma