There’s plenty of posts to be written on this topic, but this one needs a bit more work. References to the sequences, especially the Reductionism and Mind Projection Fallacy sections and stating what parts you disagree with or are expanding upon is a good idea.
More specific problems with the post:
I don’t think “a robust consensus answer” is what I’m hoping for—I’d rather have actual truth (though I appreciate when truth and consensus converge, it can take awhile).
I like the rock analogy a lot, but you don’t go far enough. We remove the rock after it’s fallen, and we take steps to prevent it (or others) falling there again. Why wouldn’t we take the same approach to humans? Remove those that can’t be altered not to offend.
Questions about individual vs group do not have “no good answer”. “Shut up and multiply” is a pretty good answer to the vast majority of them (though I wish Eliezer had said “calculate” instead, as “multiply” sends my brain to species reproduction first before I remember the context). Recognizing the difference between the outcome you want and the signal you want to send is often necessary as part of the calculation of course.
We need to start thinking of ourselves as whole beings, one entity from head to toe: brain and body, past and future, from birth to death. Wow, no. The tone is a bit condescending, but that’s fixable. Much worse, it’s simply not right, or at least very hard to justify. It may well be that what I call “me” is a set of distinct and shifting subentities, currently implemented in brain and body, with partial-at-best continuity from well before birth to a future beyond what will likely be called death.
I read Reductionism and Mind Projection Fallacy some time ago. I liked them and I don’t think that what I am saying here disagreed or expanded on those pieces. I will read them again to see if I now feel differently about it.
Perhaps I need to make it clearer but the section on responsibility, morality and identity is not meant to say much about these issues other than that there is little reason to think that our society is going to be damaged by what science may say in the future about decision making.
There’s plenty of posts to be written on this topic, but this one needs a bit more work. References to the sequences, especially the Reductionism and Mind Projection Fallacy sections and stating what parts you disagree with or are expanding upon is a good idea.
More specific problems with the post:
I don’t think “a robust consensus answer” is what I’m hoping for—I’d rather have actual truth (though I appreciate when truth and consensus converge, it can take awhile).
I like the rock analogy a lot, but you don’t go far enough. We remove the rock after it’s fallen, and we take steps to prevent it (or others) falling there again. Why wouldn’t we take the same approach to humans? Remove those that can’t be altered not to offend.
Questions about individual vs group do not have “no good answer”. “Shut up and multiply” is a pretty good answer to the vast majority of them (though I wish Eliezer had said “calculate” instead, as “multiply” sends my brain to species reproduction first before I remember the context). Recognizing the difference between the outcome you want and the signal you want to send is often necessary as part of the calculation of course.
We need to start thinking of ourselves as whole beings, one entity from head to toe: brain and body, past and future, from birth to death. Wow, no. The tone is a bit condescending, but that’s fixable. Much worse, it’s simply not right, or at least very hard to justify. It may well be that what I call “me” is a set of distinct and shifting subentities, currently implemented in brain and body, with partial-at-best continuity from well before birth to a future beyond what will likely be called death.
I read Reductionism and Mind Projection Fallacy some time ago. I liked them and I don’t think that what I am saying here disagreed or expanded on those pieces. I will read them again to see if I now feel differently about it. Perhaps I need to make it clearer but the section on responsibility, morality and identity is not meant to say much about these issues other than that there is little reason to think that our society is going to be damaged by what science may say in the future about decision making.