Some vaguely clustered opinions on metaethics/âmetanormativity
Iâm finding myself slightly more sympathetic to moral antirealism lately, but still afford most of my credence to a form of realism that would not be labeled âstrongâ or ârobust.â There are several complicated propositions I find plausible that are in tension:
1. I have a strong aversion to arbitrary or ad hoc elements in ethics. Practically this cashes out as things like: (1) rejecting any solutions to population ethics that violate transitivity, and (2) being fairly unpersuaded by solutions to fanaticism that round down small probabilities or cap the utility function.
2. Despite this, I do notintrinsically care about the simplicity of a moral theory, at least for some conceptions of âsimplicity.â Itâs quite common in EA and rationalist circles to dismiss simple or monistic moral theories as attempting to shoehorn the complexity of human values into one box. I grant that I might unintentionally be doing this when I respond to critiques of the moral theory that makes most sense to me, which is âsimple.â But from the inside I donât introspect that this is whatâs going on. I would be perfectly happy to add some complexity to my theory to avoid underfitting the moral data, provided this isnât so contrived as to constitute overfitting. The closest cases I can think of where I might need to do this are in population ethics and fanaticism. I simply donât see what could matter morally in the kinds of things whose intrinsic value I reject: rules, virtues, happiness, desert, ⌠When I think of these things, and the thought experiments meant to pump oneâs intuitions in their favor, I do feel their emotional force. Itâs simply that I am more inclined to think of them as just that: emotional, or game theoretically useful constructs that break down when you eliminate bad consequences on conscious experience. The fact that I may âcareâ about them doesnât mean I endorse them as relevant to making the world a better place.
3. Changing my mind on moral matters doesnât feel like âfiguring out my values.â I roughly know what I value. Many things I value, like a disproportionate degree of comfort for myself, are things I very much wish I didnât value, things I donât think I should value. A common response Iâve received is something like: âThe values you donât think you âshouldâ have are simply ones that contradict stronger values you hold. You have meta-preferences/âmeta-values.â Sure, but I donât think this has always been the case. Before I learned about EA, I donât think it would have been accurate to say I really did âvalueâ impartial maximization of good across sentient beings. This was a value I had to adopt, to bring my motivations in line with my reasons. Encountering EA materials did not feel at all like âOh, you know what, deep down this was always what I wouldâve wanted to optimize for, I just didnât know I wouldâve wanted it.â
4. The question âwhat would you do if you discovered the moral truth was to do [obviously bad thing]?â doesnât make sense to me, for certain inputs of [obviously bad thing], e.g. torturing all sentient beings as much as possible. For extreme inputs of that sort, the question is similar to âwhat would you do if you discovered 2+2=5?â For less extreme inputs, such that itâs plausible to me I simply have not thought through ethics enough that I could imagine that hypothetical but merely find it unlikely right now, the question does make sense, and I see nothing wrong with saying âyes.â I suspect many antirealists do this all the time, radically changing their minds on moral questions due to considerations other than empirical discoveries, and they would not be content saying âscrew the moral truthâ by retaining their previous stance.
5. I do not expect that artificial superintelligence would converge on The Moral Truth by default. Even if it did, the convergence might be too slow to prevent catastrophes. But I also doubt humans will converge on this either. Both humans and AIs are limited by our access only to our âownâ qualia, and indeed our own present qualia. The kind of âmoral realismâ I find plausible with respect to this convergence question is that convergence to moral truth could occur for a perfectly rational and fully informed agent, with unlimited computation andâmost importantlyâsubjective access to the hypothetical future experiences of all sentient beings. These conditions are so idealized that I am probably as pessimistic about AI as any antirealist, but Iâm not sure yet if theyâre so idealized that I functionally am an antirealist in this sense.
Some vaguely clustered opinions on metaethics/âmetanormativity
Iâm finding myself slightly more sympathetic to moral antirealism lately, but still afford most of my credence to a form of realism that would not be labeled âstrongâ or ârobust.â There are several complicated propositions I find plausible that are in tension:
1. I have a strong aversion to arbitrary or ad hoc elements in ethics. Practically this cashes out as things like: (1) rejecting any solutions to population ethics that violate transitivity, and (2) being fairly unpersuaded by solutions to fanaticism that round down small probabilities or cap the utility function.
2. Despite this, I do not intrinsically care about the simplicity of a moral theory, at least for some conceptions of âsimplicity.â Itâs quite common in EA and rationalist circles to dismiss simple or monistic moral theories as attempting to shoehorn the complexity of human values into one box. I grant that I might unintentionally be doing this when I respond to critiques of the moral theory that makes most sense to me, which is âsimple.â But from the inside I donât introspect that this is whatâs going on. I would be perfectly happy to add some complexity to my theory to avoid underfitting the moral data, provided this isnât so contrived as to constitute overfitting. The closest cases I can think of where I might need to do this are in population ethics and fanaticism. I simply donât see what could matter morally in the kinds of things whose intrinsic value I reject: rules, virtues, happiness, desert, ⌠When I think of these things, and the thought experiments meant to pump oneâs intuitions in their favor, I do feel their emotional force. Itâs simply that I am more inclined to think of them as just that: emotional, or game theoretically useful constructs that break down when you eliminate bad consequences on conscious experience. The fact that I may âcareâ about them doesnât mean I endorse them as relevant to making the world a better place.
3. Changing my mind on moral matters doesnât feel like âfiguring out my values.â I roughly know what I value. Many things I value, like a disproportionate degree of comfort for myself, are things I very much wish I didnât value, things I donât think I should value. A common response Iâve received is something like: âThe values you donât think you âshouldâ have are simply ones that contradict stronger values you hold. You have meta-preferences/âmeta-values.â Sure, but I donât think this has always been the case. Before I learned about EA, I donât think it would have been accurate to say I really did âvalueâ impartial maximization of good across sentient beings. This was a value I had to adopt, to bring my motivations in line with my reasons. Encountering EA materials did not feel at all like âOh, you know what, deep down this was always what I wouldâve wanted to optimize for, I just didnât know I wouldâve wanted it.â
4. The question âwhat would you do if you discovered the moral truth was to do [obviously bad thing]?â doesnât make sense to me, for certain inputs of [obviously bad thing], e.g. torturing all sentient beings as much as possible. For extreme inputs of that sort, the question is similar to âwhat would you do if you discovered 2+2=5?â For less extreme inputs, such that itâs plausible to me I simply have not thought through ethics enough that I could imagine that hypothetical but merely find it unlikely right now, the question does make sense, and I see nothing wrong with saying âyes.â I suspect many antirealists do this all the time, radically changing their minds on moral questions due to considerations other than empirical discoveries, and they would not be content saying âscrew the moral truthâ by retaining their previous stance.
5. I do not expect that artificial superintelligence would converge on The Moral Truth by default. Even if it did, the convergence might be too slow to prevent catastrophes. But I also doubt humans will converge on this either. Both humans and AIs are limited by our access only to our âownâ qualia, and indeed our own present qualia. The kind of âmoral realismâ I find plausible with respect to this convergence question is that convergence to moral truth could occur for a perfectly rational and fully informed agent, with unlimited computation andâmost importantlyâsubjective access to the hypothetical future experiences of all sentient beings. These conditions are so idealized that I am probably as pessimistic about AI as any antirealist, but Iâm not sure yet if theyâre so idealized that I functionally am an antirealist in this sense.