Eliezer: You have perhaps already considered this, but I think it would be helpful to learn some lessons from E-Prime when discussing this topic. E-Prime is a subset of English that bans most varieties of the verb “to be”.
I find sentences like “murder is wrong” particularly underspecified and confusing. Just what, exactly, is meant by “is”, and “wrong”? It seems like agreeing on a definition for “murder” is the easy part.
It seems the ultimate confusion here is that we are talking about instrumental values (should I open the car door?) before agreeing on terminal values (am I going to the store?).
If we could agree on some well-defined goal, e.g. maximization of human happiness, we could much more easily theorize on whether a particular case of murder would benefit or harm that goal.
It is, however, much harder to talk about murders in general, and infeasible to discuss this unless we have agreed on a terminal value to work for.
Eliezer: You have perhaps already considered this, but I think it would be helpful to learn some lessons from E-Prime when discussing this topic. E-Prime is a subset of English that bans most varieties of the verb “to be”.
I find sentences like “murder is wrong” particularly underspecified and confusing. Just what, exactly, is meant by “is”, and “wrong”? It seems like agreeing on a definition for “murder” is the easy part.
It seems the ultimate confusion here is that we are talking about instrumental values (should I open the car door?) before agreeing on terminal values (am I going to the store?).
If we could agree on some well-defined goal, e.g. maximization of human happiness, we could much more easily theorize on whether a particular case of murder would benefit or harm that goal.
It is, however, much harder to talk about murders in general, and infeasible to discuss this unless we have agreed on a terminal value to work for.