I’m not sure that there is community consensus that “human beings currently living” is the right reference class. Eliezer suggests that he thinks the right reference class is all of humanity ever in this post.
If one assumes some kind of moral progress constraint and unpredictable future values, CEV(living humans) seems like our future descendents would hate it. Certainly, modern Westerners probably would hate CEV(Europeans-alive-in-1300). But I’m a moral anti-realist, so I don’t believe there are constraints that cause moral progress—and don’t expect CEV(all-humans-ever) to output a morality.
Gwern collects some evidence against the proposition. The fact that people disagree and think morality is timeless in some sense is not particularly strong evidence when compared to results of competent historical analysis.
Of course, which historical analysis is considered credible is fairly controversial.
Part of the point of CEV is to make the extrapolation process good enough that future beings X won’t hate the extrapolation of arbitrary past group Y. The extrapolation should be effective and broad enough that extrapolating from humans in different parts of history would not appreciably change the outcome. My guess would be that the extrapolation process itself would provide most of the content, the starting reference class being a minor variable.
Resolving that issue is part of the overall goal of the SI, and a huge project. I’m also a moral anti-realist, by the way. CEV should be starter-insensitive w/ respect to humans from different time periods. My reasons for why I think that this is achievable in principle would be a whole post.
I’d be very interested in a theory that harmonized CEV with moral anti-realism.
And you seem to believe in a very strong form of extrapolation. I’m personally skeptical that CEV(modern-humanity) would output anything, while you assert CEV(modern-humanity) = CEV(ancient Greece). Surely you don’t think CEV(Clippy) = CEV(humanity).
minor terminology note: I’ve always used CEV and (moral) extrapolation interchangeably. If there’s a reason I shouldn’t do that, I’d appreciate an explanatory pointer.
Well, moral extrapolation is a broader category than CEV. CEV suggests, for instance, that we should also take into account the social dynamics that would influence the development of morality (“grown up farther together”), while you could conceivably also have a moral extrapolation approach which considered that irrelevant.
(One could also argue that it is the addition of social dynamics which helps justify the notion of CEV(modern-humanity) = CEV(ancient Greece), given that it was technological and social dynamics which got us from the values-of-ancient-Greece to values-of-today. Of course, that presupposes a deterministic view of history, which seems to me highly implausible. It also opens the door for all kinds of nasty social dynamics.)
I’m not sure that there is community consensus that “human beings currently living” is the right reference class. Eliezer suggests that he thinks the right reference class is all of humanity ever in this post.
If one assumes some kind of moral progress constraint and unpredictable future values, CEV(living humans) seems like our future descendents would hate it. Certainly, modern Westerners probably would hate CEV(Europeans-alive-in-1300). But I’m a moral anti-realist, so I don’t believe there are constraints that cause moral progress—and don’t expect CEV(all-humans-ever) to output a morality.
Some people would disagree.
Gwern collects some evidence against the proposition. The fact that people disagree and think morality is timeless in some sense is not particularly strong evidence when compared to results of competent historical analysis.
Of course, which historical analysis is considered credible is fairly controversial.
Part of the point of CEV is to make the extrapolation process good enough that future beings X won’t hate the extrapolation of arbitrary past group Y. The extrapolation should be effective and broad enough that extrapolating from humans in different parts of history would not appreciably change the outcome. My guess would be that the extrapolation process itself would provide most of the content, the starting reference class being a minor variable.
It would be convenient if such a process could be proven to exist and rigorously described.
Resolving that issue would do a lot to address the OPs concerns. Separately, it would be a strong reason for me to reject moral anti-realism.
What evidence do we have that such convenient extrapolation is actually possible?
Resolving that issue is part of the overall goal of the SI, and a huge project. I’m also a moral anti-realist, by the way. CEV should be starter-insensitive w/ respect to humans from different time periods. My reasons for why I think that this is achievable in principle would be a whole post.
I’d be very interested in a theory that harmonized CEV with moral anti-realism.
And you seem to believe in a very strong form of extrapolation. I’m personally skeptical that CEV(modern-humanity) would output anything, while you assert CEV(modern-humanity) = CEV(ancient Greece). Surely you don’t think CEV(Clippy) = CEV(humanity).
minor terminology note: I’ve always used CEV and (moral) extrapolation interchangeably. If there’s a reason I shouldn’t do that, I’d appreciate an explanatory pointer.
Well, moral extrapolation is a broader category than CEV. CEV suggests, for instance, that we should also take into account the social dynamics that would influence the development of morality (“grown up farther together”), while you could conceivably also have a moral extrapolation approach which considered that irrelevant.
(One could also argue that it is the addition of social dynamics which helps justify the notion of CEV(modern-humanity) = CEV(ancient Greece), given that it was technological and social dynamics which got us from the values-of-ancient-Greece to values-of-today. Of course, that presupposes a deterministic view of history, which seems to me highly implausible. It also opens the door for all kinds of nasty social dynamics.)
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