I’m concerned (morally horrified as well as convinced of factual error) by quotes from two texts that are part of the “canon” here.
Neither is anything remotely resembling “canon”. TWC is an early attempt at metaethics fiction, and the Confession was reposted from Facebook, by popular (but misguided) demand. While a fun reading in context, they do not represent anything more. The LW site is certainly not the intended audience for the “confession”, as far as I understand, and this mismatch shows quite painfully.
If you feel like being “morally horrified” (whatever that might mean), at least consider looking at the Sequences.
I meant “morally horrified” as shorthand for “high confidence that what is described greatly reduces happiness”. If you have a decision-making process that operates without you feeling anything, I would like to hear about it. In that case, you might enjoy reading Gut Feelings, which describes how feelings typically help people accurately make decisions in a time-limited environment. In some scenarios, allowing time to think and reflect resulted in a less-accurate decision-making than relying on snap judgments, for example because time allowed people to assign too much meaning to unreliable information.
While a fun reading in context, they do not represent anything more.
This could be said about any text anyone disagrees with.
Neither is anything remotely resembling “canon”. TWC is an early attempt at metaethics fiction, and the Confession was reposted from Facebook, by popular (but misguided) demand. While a fun reading in context, they do not represent anything more. The LW site is certainly not the intended audience for the “confession”, as far as I understand, and this mismatch shows quite painfully.
If you feel like being “morally horrified” (whatever that might mean), at least consider looking at the Sequences.
I meant “morally horrified” as shorthand for “high confidence that what is described greatly reduces happiness”. If you have a decision-making process that operates without you feeling anything, I would like to hear about it. In that case, you might enjoy reading Gut Feelings, which describes how feelings typically help people accurately make decisions in a time-limited environment. In some scenarios, allowing time to think and reflect resulted in a less-accurate decision-making than relying on snap judgments, for example because time allowed people to assign too much meaning to unreliable information.
This could be said about any text anyone disagrees with.
No, it really couldn’t—not with a similar degree of justification, anyway.
(Why is this a bad comment? Not everything is a fully general counterargument, and the context here is definitely nontrivial!)