If you declare that someone is wrong for not sharing your definition of a word, that is a statement about dictionaries, not concepts. And while arguing over which definition you favor might be a fun way to spend an afternoon, it is very inefficient for any other purpose.
I imagine that if you revisited this post today, you’d agree that (1) people use the words “ethics” and “ethical truths” in different ways, and (2) claims should be evaluated based on evidence, not strictly-binary “verification” or “falsification”.
I imagine that if you revisited this post today, you’d agree that (1) people use the words “ethics” and “ethical truths” in different ways, and (2) claims should be evaluated based on comparative weights of evidence, not strictly-binary “verification” or “falsification”.
The lack of ethics are also not falsifiable. By the same logic, you could say that there must be ethical truths.
Why must everything that exists be falsifiable? If there was a particle that didn’t react to any of the four forces, its existence would be unfalsifiable. Is that any reason for it to not exist? If you had two non-interacting universe, by your logic each could say that the other doesn’t exist. Certainly two universes isn’t the same as no universes.
Although, each wouldn’t know about the other… so maybe they would be justified in inferring that the other doesn’t exist.
(After all, invisible fairies could be hiding in your attic right now, provided they are invisible, inaudible, massless, permeable to all substances...)
Um… If there’s a particle which does not interact with anything in the observable universe, then the state of the universe would be exactly the same if that particle did not exist. While we can go about postulating the existence of a myriad of such particles, the entire idea of Occam’s razor is that it is easier to just say that things which cannot possibly affect the universe don’t exist.
But there’s also no evidence against it. Just don’t update your priors. Don’t pick the simplest explanation in the set and claim it’s the only possible one.
It’s not the only possible one, but I’m going to act as if it doesn’t exist because I have no evidence it exists and because there’s no reason to expect that to change.
Ask yourself, “What’s your anticipated experience?”
If you don’t have one, how can you even say you have a belief?
If you don’t have one, how can you even say you have a belief?
Suppose someone offers you what’s either an experience machine or an omnipotence machine. As much fun as an experience machine is, you know other people need you enough that it’s important not to enter it. An omnipotence machine will let you help these people much more efficiently, so it would be very important to enter. Your anticipated experiences are the same either way, yet you do not value each possibility the same. If you use the machine, you clearly believe it’s an omnipotence machine. If not, you believe it’s an experience machine.
I enter the omnipotence machine and experience omnipotence with expected experience of saving the human race versus entering the experience machine and… what exactly? Dreaming I saved the human race? I expect to save the human race. Are you saying I should say expected consequences? Or what?
If I can’t tell the difference, I don’t know how this applies. At that point, we’re back at solipsism. If my experiences are false, then any attempt to steer my future is doomed.
If I can’t tell the difference, I don’t know how this applies. At that point, we’re back at solipsism. If my experiences are false, then any attempt to steer my future is doomed.
Any attempt to experiment is doomed. You have to make a decision under uncertainty. You’d have to do that anyway. It’s just that now “experiment” isn’t one of the options.
Ask yourself, “What’s your anticipated experience?”
If you don’t have one, how can you even say you have a belief?
I have a past experience that leads me to predict essentially no direct experiences yet that I have nonetheless have not forgotten. For example, if I remember sending the relativistic rocket outside my future light-cone or towards a black hole. I still believe it probably exists.
Well, your memory counts as an experience. As does the hawking radiation that you expect to find emitting out of a black hole.
Just as your subjective experience of consciousness counts as evidence of you being conscious. Just as the similarities between your behavior and the behavior of others is exactly what you’d expect if they were as conscious as you are.
It probably didn’t exist as a rocket, at least for very long near a black hole, but you need magic to turn matter into nothing, and there’s no evidence of magic.
There is no standard way to define blackhole’s volume, so your first statement is meaningless. (“Not much time” would make a bit more sense.) Black hole’s mass can vary, so “Lots of mass” depends on what you mean by lots.
My understanding was that blackholes were areas of extremely dense matter that created gravity so strong light couldn’t escape their event horizons (without exotic stuff like Hawking radiation). I meant it to be a truism.
I’m not pretending my physics knowledge is super deep, but I’m pretty sure that blackhole have mass, and that if an object goes into a blackhole, their mass becomes part of it, the same as if I put the object into a sun. The mass is not magicked away.
blackholes were areas of extremely dense matter that created gravity so strong light couldn’t escape their event horizons
The “extremely dense matter” part is wrong, black holes are vacuum, even though they are formed from collapsing matter. In this sense, matter “is turned into nothing”.
an object goes into a blackhole, their mass becomes part of it
That much is true, but mass is just a number (properly measured infinitely far from the black hole, to boot), not something you can touch or see.
The “extremely dense matter” part is wrong, black holes are vacuum, even though they are formed from collapsing matter. In this sense, matter “is turned into nothing”.
Firstly, wikipedia, lied to me. Second, not being a smart ass, how do we know?
The “extremely dense matter” part is wrong, black holes are vacuum, even though they are formed from collapsing matter. In this sense, matter “is turned into nothing”.
Wouldn’t it’s gravitational pull become stronger? It’s event horizon cover a slightly larger area?
I was just saying E=MC squared. That’s all. Enegy is conserved. And we base our anticipations on that.
This is the prediction of General Relativity, a theory which has been experimentally confirmed pretty well so far, so it is safe to trust it, except for maybe Planck-scale phenomena, which require quantum gravity or something similar.
Wouldn’t it’s gravitational pull become stronger? It’s [sic] event horizon cover a slightly larger area?
Both true, but measured reasonably far outside the black hole, and so is not related to the internal structure of black hole.
I was just saying E=MC squared. That’s all. Enegy is conserved.
E=mc^2 does not imply that energy is conserved. For example, the total energy of the universe is not conserved (and not even well defined). It only means that energy and (relativistic) mass are related.
And we base our anticipations on that.
We base our anticipations of what would happen to us should we dive into a black hole on the predictions of GR, the model describing black holes. And these predictions tell us the sad story of unavoidable and untimely demise. Note the “would” and “to us” part. It’s pointless to argue about “what “really happens” to someone else, given that there is no way to actually know that. For example, that someone else could collide with another ship from the mirror universe connected to the same black hole, and we would not know the difference. Or they could be torn apart by chaotic tidal gravity earlier than they anticipated, because something else was consumed by the black hole just prior to their plunge and disturbed this otherwise sanguine object. Or, if the Cartan modification of GR is correct (not very likely), the ship (or what’s left of it) might emerge into another universe through a white hole in a burst of gamma radiation. These are all predictions of GR, but there is no way to tell which one comes to pass without taking the plunge. Thus it is pointless to argue about “what really happened”, just like it is pointless to argue whether a particle “which does not interact with anything in the observable universe” exists or not.
Discussion of beliefs that do not make observable predictions is unproductive (Making Beliefs Pay Rent), and discussion of beliefs that do not make ANY predictions about ANYTHING EVER is literally meaningless (the different versions of reality are not meaningfully distinguishable).
That said… ethics poses an exception to this rule, because although ethical beliefs don’t make predictions (for anything ever), they still have implications for how you should behave. This is entirely unique to ethical beliefs.
As much as I’d love to do away with the infinite rambling debates over predictionless beliefs, ethics stands in the way. They are beliefs that pay rent not in the currency of predictions to be used to achieve your goals, but in the form of the very goals themselves—an offer so irresistible to instrumental rationalists such as myself, that we will trample far past our ordinary epistemic boundaries to grasp at it.
If there were compelling theoretical reasons, I might suppose that it existed. For example,
if every particle had a charge that was an element of a particular group, which could be factored into the Cartesian product of four groups, one for each force, and
a particle which has its charge being the identity element in any one of those groups doesn’t feel that force, and
this theory uses the group structure in some significant way, not just as a glorified table, and
every element of the overall group has exactly one kind of particle with that exact combination of charges,
except we couldn’t tell whether there was a particle in the ‘no interactions’ slot because it didn’t interact with anything...
I’d hazard that they exist, not that it would matter.
I think you’re mistakenly equivocating between “wrong with” referring to morality and rational justification. If there are no moral truths, then of course it’s not immoral to believe there are moral truths, but it’s not epistemically rational, which is the relevant point among people who care about epistemic rationality.
The point Daniel makes about morality—that your actions if you don’t believe in moral truths should be the same as those if you do—IS relevant to people who care about INSTRUMENTAL epistemic rationality (the irrelevance of this matter is relevant if you get what I mean)
“Mistakenly equivocating” is not quite fair. It’s plainly obvious that he meant “wrong” in the moral sense, considering he literally opened with “if there are no ethical truths…”. (Plus, I’m taking “assume” to mean “act as though” rather than “believe”, which also solves your point of disagreement)
What’s wrong with not following epistemic rationality then if there are no moral truths? If there are no moral truths, it doesn’t matter whether you are rational or not; no option is better than the other.
The difference is that ethics are not falsifiable. This leads me to believe there are no ethical truths.
Morality is about the thriving of sentient beings.
There are in fact truths about that.
For example: Stabbing—generally a bad thing if the being is made of flesh and organs.
TGGP3 clearly does not share your definition for the word ‘moral/ethical’ otherwise he would not have made such a comment.
That would make him wrong, then.
How so?
In the direct literal sense. It wasn’t a trick question. 2 + 2 =/= 7, while we’re at it.
If you declare that someone is wrong for not sharing your definition of a word, that is a statement about dictionaries, not concepts. And while arguing over which definition you favor might be a fun way to spend an afternoon, it is very inefficient for any other purpose.
Which is, incidentally, why I would not recommend it happen very often. But I can’t control when people choose to be more wrong rather than less.
I imagine that if you revisited this post today, you’d agree that (1) people use the words “ethics” and “ethical truths” in different ways, and (2) claims should be evaluated based on evidence, not strictly-binary “verification” or “falsification”.
I imagine that if you revisited this post today, you’d agree that (1) people use the words “ethics” and “ethical truths” in different ways, and (2) claims should be evaluated based on comparative weights of evidence, not strictly-binary “verification” or “falsification”.
The lack of ethics are also not falsifiable. By the same logic, you could say that there must be ethical truths.
Why must everything that exists be falsifiable? If there was a particle that didn’t react to any of the four forces, its existence would be unfalsifiable. Is that any reason for it to not exist? If you had two non-interacting universe, by your logic each could say that the other doesn’t exist. Certainly two universes isn’t the same as no universes.
Although, each wouldn’t know about the other… so maybe they would be justified in inferring that the other doesn’t exist.
(After all, invisible fairies could be hiding in your attic right now, provided they are invisible, inaudible, massless, permeable to all substances...)
Say what you will about them being justified. They’re still wrong.
Um… If there’s a particle which does not interact with anything in the observable universe, then the state of the universe would be exactly the same if that particle did not exist. While we can go about postulating the existence of a myriad of such particles, the entire idea of Occam’s razor is that it is easier to just say that things which cannot possibly affect the universe don’t exist.
Why are you suggesting saying it doesn’t exist? Because it’s easier?
Because there’s no evidence of it.
But there’s also no evidence against it. Just don’t update your priors. Don’t pick the simplest explanation in the set and claim it’s the only possible one.
It’s not the only possible one, but I’m going to act as if it doesn’t exist because I have no evidence it exists and because there’s no reason to expect that to change.
Ask yourself, “What’s your anticipated experience?”
If you don’t have one, how can you even say you have a belief?
Suppose someone offers you what’s either an experience machine or an omnipotence machine. As much fun as an experience machine is, you know other people need you enough that it’s important not to enter it. An omnipotence machine will let you help these people much more efficiently, so it would be very important to enter. Your anticipated experiences are the same either way, yet you do not value each possibility the same. If you use the machine, you clearly believe it’s an omnipotence machine. If not, you believe it’s an experience machine.
I’m not sure I understand the hypothetical.
I enter the omnipotence machine and experience omnipotence with expected experience of saving the human race versus entering the experience machine and… what exactly? Dreaming I saved the human race? I expect to save the human race. Are you saying I should say expected consequences? Or what?
If I can’t tell the difference, I don’t know how this applies. At that point, we’re back at solipsism. If my experiences are false, then any attempt to steer my future is doomed.
Yes.
Any attempt to experiment is doomed. You have to make a decision under uncertainty. You’d have to do that anyway. It’s just that now “experiment” isn’t one of the options.
I have a past experience that leads me to predict essentially no direct experiences yet that I have nonetheless have not forgotten. For example, if I remember sending the relativistic rocket outside my future light-cone or towards a black hole. I still believe it probably exists.
Well, your memory counts as an experience. As does the hawking radiation that you expect to find emitting out of a black hole.
Just as your subjective experience of consciousness counts as evidence of you being conscious. Just as the similarities between your behavior and the behavior of others is exactly what you’d expect if they were as conscious as you are.
Your memory only shows that the ship left. It doesn’t tell you that the ship continued existing once it crossed the event horizon.
It probably didn’t exist as a rocket, at least for very long near a black hole, but you need magic to turn matter into nothing, and there’s no evidence of magic.
As far is we know, there is nothing inside a black hole, yet it is not magic.
Not much space. Lots of mass.
There is no standard way to define blackhole’s volume, so your first statement is meaningless. (“Not much time” would make a bit more sense.) Black hole’s mass can vary, so “Lots of mass” depends on what you mean by lots.
My understanding was that blackholes were areas of extremely dense matter that created gravity so strong light couldn’t escape their event horizons (without exotic stuff like Hawking radiation). I meant it to be a truism.
I’m not pretending my physics knowledge is super deep, but I’m pretty sure that blackhole have mass, and that if an object goes into a blackhole, their mass becomes part of it, the same as if I put the object into a sun. The mass is not magicked away.
The “extremely dense matter” part is wrong, black holes are vacuum, even though they are formed from collapsing matter. In this sense, matter “is turned into nothing”.
That much is true, but mass is just a number (properly measured infinitely far from the black hole, to boot), not something you can touch or see.
Firstly, wikipedia, lied to me. Second, not being a smart ass, how do we know?
Wouldn’t it’s gravitational pull become stronger? It’s event horizon cover a slightly larger area?
I was just saying E=MC squared. That’s all. Enegy is conserved. And we base our anticipations on that.
This is the prediction of General Relativity, a theory which has been experimentally confirmed pretty well so far, so it is safe to trust it, except for maybe Planck-scale phenomena, which require quantum gravity or something similar.
Both true, but measured reasonably far outside the black hole, and so is not related to the internal structure of black hole.
E=mc^2 does not imply that energy is conserved. For example, the total energy of the universe is not conserved (and not even well defined). It only means that energy and (relativistic) mass are related.
We base our anticipations of what would happen to us should we dive into a black hole on the predictions of GR, the model describing black holes. And these predictions tell us the sad story of unavoidable and untimely demise. Note the “would” and “to us” part. It’s pointless to argue about “what “really happens” to someone else, given that there is no way to actually know that. For example, that someone else could collide with another ship from the mirror universe connected to the same black hole, and we would not know the difference. Or they could be torn apart by chaotic tidal gravity earlier than they anticipated, because something else was consumed by the black hole just prior to their plunge and disturbed this otherwise sanguine object. Or, if the Cartan modification of GR is correct (not very likely), the ship (or what’s left of it) might emerge into another universe through a white hole in a burst of gamma radiation. These are all predictions of GR, but there is no way to tell which one comes to pass without taking the plunge. Thus it is pointless to argue about “what really happened”, just like it is pointless to argue whether a particle “which does not interact with anything in the observable universe” exists or not.
It was a particularly large black hole.
How about a photon not in our light cone? Does that exist? It’s completely unmeasurable and can have no measurable effects.
Ethics is (infuriatingly) unique in this aspect.
Discussion of beliefs that do not make observable predictions is unproductive (Making Beliefs Pay Rent), and discussion of beliefs that do not make ANY predictions about ANYTHING EVER is literally meaningless (the different versions of reality are not meaningfully distinguishable).
That said… ethics poses an exception to this rule, because although ethical beliefs don’t make predictions (for anything ever), they still have implications for how you should behave. This is entirely unique to ethical beliefs.
As much as I’d love to do away with the infinite rambling debates over predictionless beliefs, ethics stands in the way. They are beliefs that pay rent not in the currency of predictions to be used to achieve your goals, but in the form of the very goals themselves—an offer so irresistible to instrumental rationalists such as myself, that we will trample far past our ordinary epistemic boundaries to grasp at it.
Each has no grounds to believe in the other’s existence, so rationally they ought to both say that the other doesn’t exist.
If there were compelling theoretical reasons, I might suppose that it existed. For example,
if every particle had a charge that was an element of a particular group, which could be factored into the Cartesian product of four groups, one for each force, and
a particle which has its charge being the identity element in any one of those groups doesn’t feel that force, and
this theory uses the group structure in some significant way, not just as a glorified table, and
every element of the overall group has exactly one kind of particle with that exact combination of charges,
except we couldn’t tell whether there was a particle in the ‘no interactions’ slot because it didn’t interact with anything...
I’d hazard that they exist, not that it would matter.
In that case I’d figure that they probably exist. Otherwise, I’d figure that they probably don’t. In either case, they might exist.
If there are no ethical truths, there’s nothing wrong with assuming that there are, so you might as well assume there are.
I think you’re mistakenly equivocating between “wrong with” referring to morality and rational justification. If there are no moral truths, then of course it’s not immoral to believe there are moral truths, but it’s not epistemically rational, which is the relevant point among people who care about epistemic rationality.
The point Daniel makes about morality—that your actions if you don’t believe in moral truths should be the same as those if you do—IS relevant to people who care about INSTRUMENTAL epistemic rationality (the irrelevance of this matter is relevant if you get what I mean)
“Mistakenly equivocating” is not quite fair. It’s plainly obvious that he meant “wrong” in the moral sense, considering he literally opened with “if there are no ethical truths…”. (Plus, I’m taking “assume” to mean “act as though” rather than “believe”, which also solves your point of disagreement)
What’s wrong with not following epistemic rationality then if there are no moral truths? If there are no moral truths, it doesn’t matter whether you are rational or not; no option is better than the other.
It’s relevant to what they care about, but what does it matter if their desires are fulfilled?
But if there are no moral truths, then there’s nothing morally wrong with being factually wrong, so who cares if you’re factually wrong?
You do, as long as you have subjective wants or needs that need accurate information to be met.
Anyone may care about anything they want. Particularly if there are no moral truths.
(If there are no moral truths, then what do you care if I care if people are factually wrong? ;) )