I think this is overall an important area and am happy to see it getting more research.
This might be something of a semantic question, but I’m curious if you what you think of the line/distinction between “moral errors” and say, “epistemic errors”.
It seems to me like a lot of the “moral errors” you bring up involve a lot of epistemic mistakes.
There are interesting empirical questions about what causes what here. Wrong epistemic beliefs clearly lead to worse morality, and also, worse morality can get one to believe in convenient and false things.
As I think about it, I realize that we probably agree about this main bucket of lock-in scenario. But I think the name of “moral errors” makes some specific assumptions that I think are highly suspect. Even if it seems like the case now that differences of morality are the overriding factor to differences in epistemics, I would place little confidence in this—it’s a tough topic.
Personally I’m a bit paranoid that people in our community have academic foundations in morality more than epistemics, and thus correspondingly emphasize morality more because of that. Or, it seems a bit convenient when specialists in morality come out arguing about “moral lock-in” as a major risk.
Unfortunately, by choosing one name to discuss this (i.e. “Moral Errors”), we might be locking in some key assumptions. Which would be ironic, given that the primary worry itself is about lock-in of these errors.
(I’ve written a bit more on “Epistemic Lock-In” here)
I think this is overall an important area and am happy to see it getting more research.
This might be something of a semantic question, but I’m curious if you what you think of the line/distinction between “moral errors” and say, “epistemic errors”.
It seems to me like a lot of the “moral errors” you bring up involve a lot of epistemic mistakes.
There are interesting empirical questions about what causes what here. Wrong epistemic beliefs clearly lead to worse morality, and also, worse morality can get one to believe in convenient and false things.
As I think about it, I realize that we probably agree about this main bucket of lock-in scenario. But I think the name of “moral errors” makes some specific assumptions that I think are highly suspect. Even if it seems like the case now that differences of morality are the overriding factor to differences in epistemics, I would place little confidence in this—it’s a tough topic.
Personally I’m a bit paranoid that people in our community have academic foundations in morality more than epistemics, and thus correspondingly emphasize morality more because of that. Or, it seems a bit convenient when specialists in morality come out arguing about “moral lock-in” as a major risk.
Unfortunately, by choosing one name to discuss this (i.e. “Moral Errors”), we might be locking in some key assumptions. Which would be ironic, given that the primary worry itself is about lock-in of these errors.
(I’ve written a bit more on “Epistemic Lock-In” here)