From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jan 10 2003 - 15:31:54 MST
Eliezer had written
>>> If your intuitions about when something is "your business" end
>>> up with you intervening at much the same points as someone who
>>> intervenes depending on their intuitions as to whether something
>>> is, as you put it, BAD, then what have you accomplished?
and I responded to that with
> > Oh, a great deal has been accomplished! The whole emphasis
> > on when we should intervene has been changed, and, IMO will
> > be found to be much more in accordance with practical and
> > time-tested laws.
>
> Um... the morality we're trying to maximize seems to me to occupy
> a logically prior level to determining which laws are "time-tested",
> insofar as morality would provide the fitness metric against which
> I determined which particular laws are good or bad.
Yes, we may indeed wish to investigate ultimate moral axioms
and preferences at the highest level first. But I guess that
I did answer your question: namely, just before taking an
action, someone may be giving one of these memes the biggest
share of run time:
A. Do I like what so-and-so is doing?
B. Is it any of my business what so-and-so is doing?
Your original question was whether there is any difference.
I suppose that I have explained how (or by now it is obvious)
that there is such a behavioral difference. This is not to
say that A isn't very important---as you say, one has to
establish the principles inherent in one's moral system.
I would suggest merely that B start getting more run time
in people than it has seemed to in recent decades.
Lee
P.S. More later in regard to your other points
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