I found this a useful summary of (at least some of) the possibilities.
A small issue is that I find that it’s clearer to avoid using the word ‘should’ as much as possible when discussing meta-ethics, since leaving the goal implied (‘should’ do X for what end?) can be ambiguous. I think it’s clearer to talk about what will happen if a being uses such-and-such a decision theory/ethics/etc, and when translating that to ‘should’ to be very clear what goal is being targeted.
edit: To give a specific example, using an unqualified ‘should’ can lead to (intentionally or unintentionally) equivocating between the values of the being under discussion and the values of its species/humanity/the author/some other ideal.
As far as I can tell that posts just demonstrates that ‘should’ really is too ambiguous to use in this kind of technical discussion where precise communication is desired.
As I read should here unqualified it means that natural selection favours certain kinds of beliefs ie those that help prosperity. Althought for some people it also means spesifications on in which prosperity to shoot for. I tend to be very suspicious of claiming one direction of radiation being better than another (before / unrelated to the genocide mechanism).
Although my concept deconstruction might have erased any “should” and might be a bit unstandard. It’s not anymore about “good” and “evil” but what is possible and what’s impossible. Some actions are highly dangerous and resource depleting being very nearly impossible and need to be offset by a lot of enabling features. Thus it’s about which forms of life are maintainable, under which conditions and which have a half-life. In this way whether helium happens more than uranium is the same kind of question whether a code of conduct results in a prosperous society (say two forms of goverment) but just orders of magnitude more harder to answer. But does it mean that uranium is more evil than helium as elements? Humans know how to use uranium as part of global security so as natural resources it clearly can produce a human good.
I found this a useful summary of (at least some of) the possibilities.
A small issue is that I find that it’s clearer to avoid using the word ‘should’ as much as possible when discussing meta-ethics, since leaving the goal implied (‘should’ do X for what end?) can be ambiguous. I think it’s clearer to talk about what will happen if a being uses such-and-such a decision theory/ethics/etc, and when translating that to ‘should’ to be very clear what goal is being targeted.
edit: To give a specific example, using an unqualified ‘should’ can lead to (intentionally or unintentionally) equivocating between the values of the being under discussion and the values of its species/humanity/the author/some other ideal.
I wrote a post on the meaning of unqualified ‘should’, and my usage here is in line with that.
As far as I can tell that posts just demonstrates that ‘should’ really is too ambiguous to use in this kind of technical discussion where precise communication is desired.
As I read should here unqualified it means that natural selection favours certain kinds of beliefs ie those that help prosperity. Althought for some people it also means spesifications on in which prosperity to shoot for. I tend to be very suspicious of claiming one direction of radiation being better than another (before / unrelated to the genocide mechanism).
Although my concept deconstruction might have erased any “should” and might be a bit unstandard. It’s not anymore about “good” and “evil” but what is possible and what’s impossible. Some actions are highly dangerous and resource depleting being very nearly impossible and need to be offset by a lot of enabling features. Thus it’s about which forms of life are maintainable, under which conditions and which have a half-life. In this way whether helium happens more than uranium is the same kind of question whether a code of conduct results in a prosperous society (say two forms of goverment) but just orders of magnitude more harder to answer. But does it mean that uranium is more evil than helium as elements? Humans know how to use uranium as part of global security so as natural resources it clearly can produce a human good.