Some vaguely clustered opinions on metaethics/metanormativity
I’m 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 “strong” or “robust.” 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 “simplicity.” It’s 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 “simple.” But from the inside I don’t introspect that this is what’s going on. I would be perfectly happy to add some complexity to my theory to avoid underfitting the moral data, provided this isn’t 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 don’t 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 one’s intuitions in their favor, I do feel their emotional force. It’s 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 “care” about them doesn’t mean I endorse them as relevant to making the world a better place.
3. Changing my mind on moral matters doesn’t feel like “figuring out my values.” 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 didn’t value, things I don’t think I should value. A common response I’ve received is something like: “The values you don’t think you ‘should’ have are simply ones that contradict stronger values you hold. You have meta-preferences/meta-values.” Sure, but I don’t think this has always been the case. Before I learned about EA, I don’t think it would have been accurate to say I really did “value” 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 “Oh, you know what, deep down this was always what I would’ve wanted to optimize for, I just didn’t know I would’ve wanted it.”
4. The question “what would you do if you discovered the moral truth was to do [obviously bad thing]?” doesn’t 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 “what would you do if you discovered 2+2=5?” For less extreme inputs, such that it’s 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 “yes.” 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 “screw the moral truth” 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 “own” qualia, and indeed our own present qualia. The kind of “moral realism” 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 and—most importantly—subjective 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 I’m not sure yet if they’re so idealized that I functionally am an antirealist in this sense.
Some vaguely clustered opinions on metaethics/metanormativity
I’m 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 “strong” or “robust.” 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 “simplicity.” It’s 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 “simple.” But from the inside I don’t introspect that this is what’s going on. I would be perfectly happy to add some complexity to my theory to avoid underfitting the moral data, provided this isn’t 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 don’t 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 one’s intuitions in their favor, I do feel their emotional force. It’s 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 “care” about them doesn’t mean I endorse them as relevant to making the world a better place.
3. Changing my mind on moral matters doesn’t feel like “figuring out my values.” 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 didn’t value, things I don’t think I should value. A common response I’ve received is something like: “The values you don’t think you ‘should’ have are simply ones that contradict stronger values you hold. You have meta-preferences/meta-values.” Sure, but I don’t think this has always been the case. Before I learned about EA, I don’t think it would have been accurate to say I really did “value” 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 “Oh, you know what, deep down this was always what I would’ve wanted to optimize for, I just didn’t know I would’ve wanted it.”
4. The question “what would you do if you discovered the moral truth was to do [obviously bad thing]?” doesn’t 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 “what would you do if you discovered 2+2=5?” For less extreme inputs, such that it’s 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 “yes.” 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 “screw the moral truth” 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 “own” qualia, and indeed our own present qualia. The kind of “moral realism” 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 and—most importantly—subjective 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 I’m not sure yet if they’re so idealized that I functionally am an antirealist in this sense.