Your ”friend“ is blackmailing you to profess religious faith. It’s an ages old pattern in our species.
One hypothesis is that he (subconsciously, perhaps) wants to protect against the Goodhart effect, i.e., you going against your stated ethics and then claiming “you never said murder was wrong.” Another hypothesis is that he has a coalition-forming mindset, where sides must be taken and rules followed. There are many more such just so stories we can dream up.
As you yourself know, people justify killing all the time. They just change the word. “Murder” is by its very definition an immoral kind of killing. What killings are societally acceptable obviously depends on the society in question and not some magical moral “truth.” Sam Harris’ analogy of moral landscapes (search for his TED talk for a short summary) is a good way to look at the validity of norms; They are “true” in so far as they create more net profits for a society that follows them relative to other normative systems. So killing terrorists is a celebratory event while killing random Joe just contracts the economy and undermines societal order.
My friendly advice to you is to not take people too seriously on debates on ethics. People prioritize signaling/reputation and norm enforcement over communicating their most objective thoughts. You’re much better served by judging their attitude via the actions they take. This is also true of oneself; Just having the right moral beliefs is worthless. What are you actually doing for others?
Thank you for the answer! I thought the Goodheart effect was about metrics turning bad when they become the thing you are optimising for. Does the term apply to something else here?
The term “murder” refering to something immoral by definition makes sense, I should have thought about this more explicitely.
Your advice in the last paragraph resonates with me. My experience has also been that people often seem to prioritize signaling. I am not a big fan of Jordan Peterson, but this reminded me of a quote of his: “If you can’t understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.”
Goodhart effect is a truly deep insight IMO. Goodhart itself states that lots of great metrics and “signals”, and in general, communicatory material, will lose its value when adopted by social systems. This leads to second order effects, such as people and society defending against this effect. This can be seen in speech easily: if your friend did not depend on your speech for various purposes, your speech would be a truly great way to learn about your “true” self. But now that he does depend on your speech, he has to guard against you lying and optimizing your speech to manipulate him and shift risks unto him. So he cannot accept your noncommittal stance on, e.g., “murder,” and requires you to commit your position. I have heard there are studies (beware replication crisis and yadada) that women prefer men with virtue ethics over utilitarians; One reason might be that virtue ethics constrains people much more effectively than “consequentialism,” where you’re your own auditor.
Your ”friend“ is blackmailing you to profess religious faith. It’s an ages old pattern in our species.
One hypothesis is that he (subconsciously, perhaps) wants to protect against the Goodhart effect, i.e., you going against your stated ethics and then claiming “you never said murder was wrong.” Another hypothesis is that he has a coalition-forming mindset, where sides must be taken and rules followed. There are many more such just so stories we can dream up.
As you yourself know, people justify killing all the time. They just change the word. “Murder” is by its very definition an immoral kind of killing. What killings are societally acceptable obviously depends on the society in question and not some magical moral “truth.” Sam Harris’ analogy of moral landscapes (search for his TED talk for a short summary) is a good way to look at the validity of norms; They are “true” in so far as they create more net profits for a society that follows them relative to other normative systems. So killing terrorists is a celebratory event while killing random Joe just contracts the economy and undermines societal order.
My friendly advice to you is to not take people too seriously on debates on ethics. People prioritize signaling/reputation and norm enforcement over communicating their most objective thoughts. You’re much better served by judging their attitude via the actions they take. This is also true of oneself; Just having the right moral beliefs is worthless. What are you actually doing for others?
Thank you for the answer! I thought the Goodheart effect was about metrics turning bad when they become the thing you are optimising for. Does the term apply to something else here?
The term “murder” refering to something immoral by definition makes sense, I should have thought about this more explicitely.
Your advice in the last paragraph resonates with me. My experience has also been that people often seem to prioritize signaling. I am not a big fan of Jordan Peterson, but this reminded me of a quote of his: “If you can’t understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.”
Goodhart effect is a truly deep insight IMO. Goodhart itself states that lots of great metrics and “signals”, and in general, communicatory material, will lose its value when adopted by social systems. This leads to second order effects, such as people and society defending against this effect. This can be seen in speech easily: if your friend did not depend on your speech for various purposes, your speech would be a truly great way to learn about your “true” self. But now that he does depend on your speech, he has to guard against you lying and optimizing your speech to manipulate him and shift risks unto him. So he cannot accept your noncommittal stance on, e.g., “murder,” and requires you to commit your position. I have heard there are studies (beware replication crisis and yadada) that women prefer men with virtue ethics over utilitarians; One reason might be that virtue ethics constrains people much more effectively than “consequentialism,” where you’re your own auditor.