I have been saying this for quite some time. I regret not posting it first. It would be nice to have a more formal proof of all of this with utility functions, deontics and whatnot. If you are up for it, let me know. I could help, feedback, or we could work together. Perhaps someone else has done it already. It has always struck me as pretty obvious, but this is the first time I’ve seen stated like this.
It seems there’s some question about whether you can phrase deontological rules consequentially—to make this more formal that needs to be settled. My first thought is that the formal version of this would say something along the lines of “you can achieve an outcome that differs by only X%, with a translation function that takes rules and spits out a utility function, which is only polynomially larger.” It’s not clear to me how to define a domain in such a way as to allow you to compute that X%.
...unfortunately, as much as I would like to see people discuss the moral landscape instead of the best way to describe it, I have very little time lately. :/
I have been saying this for quite some time. I regret not posting it first. It would be nice to have a more formal proof of all of this with utility functions, deontics and whatnot. If you are up for it, let me know. I could help, feedback, or we could work together. Perhaps someone else has done it already. It has always struck me as pretty obvious, but this is the first time I’ve seen stated like this.
Check out the previous discussion Luke linked to: http://lesswrong.com/lw/c45/almost_every_moral_theory_can_be_represented_by_a/
It seems there’s some question about whether you can phrase deontological rules consequentially—to make this more formal that needs to be settled. My first thought is that the formal version of this would say something along the lines of “you can achieve an outcome that differs by only X%, with a translation function that takes rules and spits out a utility function, which is only polynomially larger.” It’s not clear to me how to define a domain in such a way as to allow you to compute that X%.
...unfortunately, as much as I would like to see people discuss the moral landscape instead of the best way to describe it, I have very little time lately. :/
Ok. If I ever get to work with this I will let you know, perhaps you can help/join.