This statement implies that humans can be more or less special “actually”, as if it were a matter of fact, of objective reality.
Well yes, yes it does. Even if “specialness” is defined purely within human neurology doesn’t mean you can’t apply it’s criteria to parts of reality and be objectively right or wrong about the result—just like, say, numbers.
Now, you could argue that humans vary with regards to how “special” humanity is to them, I suppose … but in practice we seem to have a common cause, generally. Alternately, you could complain that paperclippers disagree about our “specialness” (or rather mean something different by the term, since their specialness algorithm returns high values for paperclips and low ones for humans and rocks), and is therefore insufficiently objective, but …
I disagree. Here is the relevant difference: if you’re using “special” unconditionally, you’re only expressing a fuzzy opinion which is just that, an opinion. To get to the level of facts you need to make your “special” conditional on some specific standard or metric and thus convert it into a measurement.
It’s still the same as saying that prettiness of roses is objective. Unconditionally, it’s not. But if you want to, you can define ‘prettiness’ sufficiently precisely to make it a measurement and then you can objectively talk about prettiness of roses.
Well yes, yes it does. Even if “specialness” is defined purely within human neurology doesn’t mean you can’t apply it’s criteria to parts of reality and be objectively right or wrong about the result—just like, say, numbers.
Now, you could argue that humans vary with regards to how “special” humanity is to them, I suppose … but in practice we seem to have a common cause, generally. Alternately, you could complain that paperclippers disagree about our “specialness” (or rather mean something different by the term, since their specialness algorithm returns high values for paperclips and low ones for humans and rocks), and is therefore insufficiently objective, but …
I disagree. Here is the relevant difference: if you’re using “special” unconditionally, you’re only expressing a fuzzy opinion which is just that, an opinion. To get to the level of facts you need to make your “special” conditional on some specific standard or metric and thus convert it into a measurement.
It’s still the same as saying that prettiness of roses is objective. Unconditionally, it’s not. But if you want to, you can define ‘prettiness’ sufficiently precisely to make it a measurement and then you can objectively talk about prettiness of roses.
Indeed. The difference being that humans don’t all have the same prettiness-metrics, which is why the comparison fails.
Humans all have the same specialness metrics?? I don’t think so.
Well, obviously some of them are biased in different directions … but yeah, it looks to me like CEV coheres.
EDIT: Unless I’ve completely misunderstood you somehow. Far from impossible.