Just as there are physical environments that are objectively better or worse for human wellbeing, it is reasonable to believe there are cultural environments that are better or worse for human wellbeing. If I have Christian moral intuitions and walk into a cannibal tribe, I might not fit in very well (and might get eaten). But that isn’t an argument for real moral relativity. It could still be true (and history seems to demonstrate) that the society with deeply ingrained Christian moral intuitions will be better for human wellbeing than the society with deeply ingrained cannibalistic tribal intuitions. Maybe you weren’t actually arguing for moral relativity, but it felt like you were by implication.
I have no hope of convincing you that you are wrong about moral relativity, only that the argument in your post is incomplete.
We could argue the exact definition of wellbeing forever without satisfying everyone of its objectivity in the abstract. But more concretely, it would be absurd for one to argue that there can be no culture, real or imaginary, with moral beliefs and practices better adapted for human thriving, given human nature, than that of (for example) the Australian aborigines - with extreme male violence, very high rates of child sexual abuse and child neglect, and stagnant populations over tens of thousands of years.
Mind is both a store of memory and adaptation to that store of memory. Erasing it is simply wiping out the experience of the mind for the time period to the pre-last copy. Not murder, but a certain reduction of experience. On the other hand, we sleep like 7h a day, and are not worse for wear.
The other thing is what if one erased the original - ie the only existing copy of a mind? Probably more like it.
Intuitions have context and the examples given are interesting but certainly do not validate such an extreme ratio as the 99%/1% pulled out of a hat, which in practice amounts to supporting the thesis of absolute relativism. A Bayesian must treat absolute affirmations with caution, even when they concern relativism. I agree that our intuitive capacity to model physics corresponds to the physics of environments that our ancestors could have known for millions of years and that we have also known since birth. Nevertheless, we can quickly adapt to new conditions and develop relevant intuition, for example to pilot an airplane or even a spacecraft. In reality, we just need experience to adapt our intuitions to new situations. Moreover, the reason this adaptation is so effective is that it relies on certain universal rules. Gravity is weaker on the moon but there is still gravity and objects follow parabolas. More generally in the universe, all objects follow geodesics and mass is associated with weight or at least inertia. Outside of extreme situations, we can quite well adapt our intuition to many physical situations. Similarly, even if we don't know how to count beyond ten, we intuitively realize that a large quantity of items is greater than a small quantity of items, we can also roughly evaluate approximate equality of quantity, even if precision decreases when orders of magnitude increase. However, someone who has been educated in mathematics and formal reasoning improves their intuition in these domains. One of the key ideas of the rationalist community is moreover that it is possible to develop a certain form of Bayesian intuition without necessarily always needing to do the math explicitly. Formal intuition is by definition universal and directly contradicts the author's thesis. In moral matters particularly, part of our values and judgments can be explained by game theory. We are not perfect rational agents, but we are not perfect irrational agents either. If we encountered an ET civilization of comparable cognitive level, it is not at all impossible that we could share certain moral judgments. For example, causing gratuitous suffering is wrong. There's no need to be an expert in game theory to understand this. A 2 or 3-year-old child can begin to understand the principle or risk of reciprocity. If you hit your brother for no reason, you increase the chances that he'll hit you for no reason. Conversely, cooperating is often good (all things being equal). If I'm nice to my brother, I increase the chances that he'll be nice to me. Any intelligent ET could share this intuition because it rests on a rational and universal foundation. Similarly, an honest contemporary person could agree with an ancient Greek philosopher on the choice to enslave someone if the only other choice is to kill them or let them return home without any guarantee. However, the same two could agree that other solutions could be even better if there were possibility of implementing them concretely. For example, taking them prisoner in exchange for a peace treaty with the other nation, then releasing them once peace would be durably sealed. Or taking them prisoner and exchanging them for a prisoner held by the other city. Or letting them choose between slavery and death (this was done and citizens sometimes chose death rather than slavery). There is no particular reason to think that Plato and Aristotle would have defended slavery if one presented them, for the purposes of reflection, with a society functioning like ours with a large-scale State holding the monopoly on legitimate violence. It's not their moral intuition that would be absolutely relative, it's mainly the context submitted to judgment that differs.
Check out Tage Rai and Alan Fiske's book, Virtuous Violence, for many examples of people viewing things as moral that we wouldn't, including murder and other severely harmful activities.
Rarely do I read a post that makes me feel I have grown better as a citizen, father, and entrepreneur. This post is among those. Especially the point about slavery as "humane" act in times of misery (saving lives instead of killing). However, context-dependent historical thinking patterns in business decision-making (close to heuristics and biases) are also noteworthy and actionable points. Close also learning and cognition that is context-dependent. (Also, via commenting on this post I internalize it = learn it, since I need to deliberatively structure this new knowledge into my previous knowledge inside my neurons :)
We have less confidence in abstract general principles than in our intuitions. But, to answer moral questions involving situations very different from those with which our species is familiar, our intuitions are likely inapplicable, and only abstract principles can be of much use.
I believe we profit in our discussion using a very simple idea. Until the triumph of Christianity individuals were not existent in the way we think in the Bronze Age world. Galatians 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Instead there was a kill box.
Just as there are physical environments that are objectively better or worse for human wellbeing, it is reasonable to believe there are cultural environments that are better or worse for human wellbeing. If I have Christian moral intuitions and walk into a cannibal tribe, I might not fit in very well (and might get eaten). But that isn’t an argument for real moral relativity. It could still be true (and history seems to demonstrate) that the society with deeply ingrained Christian moral intuitions will be better for human wellbeing than the society with deeply ingrained cannibalistic tribal intuitions. Maybe you weren’t actually arguing for moral relativity, but it felt like you were by implication.
Better to take apart "wellbeing" into more specific factors, then we can talk more about their degree of absoluteness.
I have no hope of convincing you that you are wrong about moral relativity, only that the argument in your post is incomplete.
We could argue the exact definition of wellbeing forever without satisfying everyone of its objectivity in the abstract. But more concretely, it would be absurd for one to argue that there can be no culture, real or imaginary, with moral beliefs and practices better adapted for human thriving, given human nature, than that of (for example) the Australian aborigines - with extreme male violence, very high rates of child sexual abuse and child neglect, and stagnant populations over tens of thousands of years.
Anyway nice fart! 😂
What about erasing the last copy of a mind? Is that the moral equivalent of murder?
Maybe, but in that world that's a quite unusual case.
Mind is both a store of memory and adaptation to that store of memory. Erasing it is simply wiping out the experience of the mind for the time period to the pre-last copy. Not murder, but a certain reduction of experience. On the other hand, we sleep like 7h a day, and are not worse for wear.
The other thing is what if one erased the original - ie the only existing copy of a mind? Probably more like it.
Intuitions have context and the examples given are interesting but certainly do not validate such an extreme ratio as the 99%/1% pulled out of a hat, which in practice amounts to supporting the thesis of absolute relativism. A Bayesian must treat absolute affirmations with caution, even when they concern relativism. I agree that our intuitive capacity to model physics corresponds to the physics of environments that our ancestors could have known for millions of years and that we have also known since birth. Nevertheless, we can quickly adapt to new conditions and develop relevant intuition, for example to pilot an airplane or even a spacecraft. In reality, we just need experience to adapt our intuitions to new situations. Moreover, the reason this adaptation is so effective is that it relies on certain universal rules. Gravity is weaker on the moon but there is still gravity and objects follow parabolas. More generally in the universe, all objects follow geodesics and mass is associated with weight or at least inertia. Outside of extreme situations, we can quite well adapt our intuition to many physical situations. Similarly, even if we don't know how to count beyond ten, we intuitively realize that a large quantity of items is greater than a small quantity of items, we can also roughly evaluate approximate equality of quantity, even if precision decreases when orders of magnitude increase. However, someone who has been educated in mathematics and formal reasoning improves their intuition in these domains. One of the key ideas of the rationalist community is moreover that it is possible to develop a certain form of Bayesian intuition without necessarily always needing to do the math explicitly. Formal intuition is by definition universal and directly contradicts the author's thesis. In moral matters particularly, part of our values and judgments can be explained by game theory. We are not perfect rational agents, but we are not perfect irrational agents either. If we encountered an ET civilization of comparable cognitive level, it is not at all impossible that we could share certain moral judgments. For example, causing gratuitous suffering is wrong. There's no need to be an expert in game theory to understand this. A 2 or 3-year-old child can begin to understand the principle or risk of reciprocity. If you hit your brother for no reason, you increase the chances that he'll hit you for no reason. Conversely, cooperating is often good (all things being equal). If I'm nice to my brother, I increase the chances that he'll be nice to me. Any intelligent ET could share this intuition because it rests on a rational and universal foundation. Similarly, an honest contemporary person could agree with an ancient Greek philosopher on the choice to enslave someone if the only other choice is to kill them or let them return home without any guarantee. However, the same two could agree that other solutions could be even better if there were possibility of implementing them concretely. For example, taking them prisoner in exchange for a peace treaty with the other nation, then releasing them once peace would be durably sealed. Or taking them prisoner and exchanging them for a prisoner held by the other city. Or letting them choose between slavery and death (this was done and citizens sometimes chose death rather than slavery). There is no particular reason to think that Plato and Aristotle would have defended slavery if one presented them, for the purposes of reflection, with a society functioning like ours with a large-scale State holding the monopoly on legitimate violence. It's not their moral intuition that would be absolutely relative, it's mainly the context submitted to judgment that differs.
Check out Tage Rai and Alan Fiske's book, Virtuous Violence, for many examples of people viewing things as moral that we wouldn't, including murder and other severely harmful activities.
This is one of those good posts to link to later.
Are you just rehashing Kant vs Descartes?
Rarely do I read a post that makes me feel I have grown better as a citizen, father, and entrepreneur. This post is among those. Especially the point about slavery as "humane" act in times of misery (saving lives instead of killing). However, context-dependent historical thinking patterns in business decision-making (close to heuristics and biases) are also noteworthy and actionable points. Close also learning and cognition that is context-dependent. (Also, via commenting on this post I internalize it = learn it, since I need to deliberatively structure this new knowledge into my previous knowledge inside my neurons :)
We have less confidence in abstract general principles than in our intuitions. But, to answer moral questions involving situations very different from those with which our species is familiar, our intuitions are likely inapplicable, and only abstract principles can be of much use.
I believe we profit in our discussion using a very simple idea. Until the triumph of Christianity individuals were not existent in the way we think in the Bronze Age world. Galatians 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Instead there was a kill box.
I wish to correct to Iron Age world. Iron ran the show by Rome, so Iron Age world.
There were tons of civilized societies even before 40 CE. Bronze age was already long gone - 1k years at least.
Iron Age is begun 1200 BC.
That's right. Rome wasn't there then. But you had those "sea people", Hittites, Canaanites and diverse varieties of Mesopotamians.