Another perspective on the meaning of morality:
On one had there is morality as “those things which I want.” I would join a lot of people here in saying that I think that what I want is arbitrary in that it was caused by some combination of my nature and nurture, rather than being in any fundamental way a product of my rationality. At the same time I can’t deny that my morality is real, or that it governs my behavior. This is why I would call myself a moral skeptic, along the lines of Hume, rather than a nihilist. I also couldn’t become an egoist without giving up my moral skepticism.
So what would it mean, and what would I do if I was stripped of this sort of morality? I don’t think I can properly imagine it since I don’t believe I can even imagine person-hood without this kind of morality.
On the other hand there is the morality that is the set of rules I use to bring my various wants and desires into harmony with each other. I can imagine this being removed from me while I still remain me, and I think this would result in a lot of incoherent and possibly hedonistic behavior before I recreated something like it.
I very much look forward to posts from Eliezer regarding whether the responses seen in this thread are in line with what he was expecting.