I do think what Eliezer is developing is different from what ordinary people mean. Ordinary people are, for the most part, moral objectivists in the strong sense—they think objectively true morals exist “out there” independently of humankind. This is usually tied into their religious or spiritual beliefs (which most ‘ordinary’ people have).
Eliezer spends a lot of time in the sequences saying things like “there is not a grain of mercy or justice in the universe, it is cold and uncaring, morals are found in us, humans”. This is exactly what most ‘ordinary’ people don’t accept.
Unfortunately, the issue is confused because Eliezer insists on using non-standard terminology. The whole ethics sequence can be seen as shoehorning the phrase “morals are objective” into actually meaning “human!morals are objective”. He claims this is how we should unpack these words, but I don’t believe ‘ordinary’ people would agree if asked. I also don’t think the universal subset of human!morals is nontrivially large or useful.
Eliezer says that what is signified by moral claims is something that would be true even if human beings did not exist, since he says it is basically like a mathematical statement. It is true that no one would make the statement in that situation, but no one would say that “2 and 2 make 4” in the same situation.
He doesn’t think that true morals exist “out there” in the same sense that he doesn’t think that mathematics exists “out there”. That is probably pretty similar to what most people think.
Also, people I know who believe in angels do not think that angels have the same morality as human beings, and those are pretty ordinary people. So that lines up quite closely with what Eliezer thinks as well.
I do think what Eliezer is developing is different from what ordinary people mean. Ordinary people are, for the most part, moral objectivists in the strong sense—they think objectively true morals exist “out there” independently of humankind. This is usually tied into their religious or spiritual beliefs (which most ‘ordinary’ people have).
Eliezer spends a lot of time in the sequences saying things like “there is not a grain of mercy or justice in the universe, it is cold and uncaring, morals are found in us, humans”. This is exactly what most ‘ordinary’ people don’t accept.
Unfortunately, the issue is confused because Eliezer insists on using non-standard terminology. The whole ethics sequence can be seen as shoehorning the phrase “morals are objective” into actually meaning “human!morals are objective”. He claims this is how we should unpack these words, but I don’t believe ‘ordinary’ people would agree if asked. I also don’t think the universal subset of human!morals is nontrivially large or useful.
Eliezer says that what is signified by moral claims is something that would be true even if human beings did not exist, since he says it is basically like a mathematical statement. It is true that no one would make the statement in that situation, but no one would say that “2 and 2 make 4” in the same situation.
He doesn’t think that true morals exist “out there” in the same sense that he doesn’t think that mathematics exists “out there”. That is probably pretty similar to what most people think.
Also, people I know who believe in angels do not think that angels have the same morality as human beings, and those are pretty ordinary people. So that lines up quite closely with what Eliezer thinks as well.