I hope antirealists have a strong showing and expose the weaknesses in your arguments and the case for moral realism more generally. There are no good arguments for moral realism. If moral realism is false, but belief in moral realism negatively impacts people's views of existential risk, belief in moral realism could even be harmful if it were to spread in EA communities.
Why would belief in moral realism negatively impact people's views of existential risk? (And what do you mean by negative impacts on people's views of existential risk?)
It could cause them to think AGIs would converge on the stance-independent moral facts, and they would therefore be moral and thus not pose a significant threat to us. People already say things like this. Here's an example:
So what I mean is that belief in moral realism could cause people to underestimate the risks of AGI for bad reasons. And I'm not even a proponent of high AGI risk. I want our assessments of the risks to be based on good reasons.
Ah, gotcha. The worry is that moral realists are more likely to reject the Orthogonality Thesis, which might cause them to be unduly optimistic about the goals that an AGI will adopt. Thanks for the clarification!
Hmmm perhaps I should write an argument for moral realism, I've wanted to do this for a while. Trouble is, I still don't feel like I adequately understand the claims of subjective morality, so it'd just seem like arguing into a void. But my position basically *is* that subjective morality can't be well-defined (unless it says e.g. "there's no actual morality, but evolution gave us certain arbitrary preferences that we call morality" which is consistent but I have other disagreements with), so I'm a bit stuck. I keep trying to understand what relativists are saying, but I think so much of this stuff is ingrained/assumed/instinctive that it's hard for relativists and realists to communicate with and understand each other. Any suggestions?
OK, I agree that hitting babies with a hammer is morally wrong, in our corner of the multiverse. But are there other possible universes where that same act is morally good because of a different context? If so the subjectivity of morality becomes context-ivity. The "realism" of morality is in the context. And is part of that context what people think and their personal preferences which gets us back to some morality being subjective (context).
You're conflating objective vs subjective wrongness with context dependence vs independence. Something can be objectively wrong in that its wrongness doesn't depend what anyone thinks, but its wrongness might still depend on context.
I hope antirealists have a strong showing and expose the weaknesses in your arguments and the case for moral realism more generally. There are no good arguments for moral realism. If moral realism is false, but belief in moral realism negatively impacts people's views of existential risk, belief in moral realism could even be harmful if it were to spread in EA communities.
You can join the fray!
Harmful from your perspective!
Why would belief in moral realism negatively impact people's views of existential risk? (And what do you mean by negative impacts on people's views of existential risk?)
It could cause them to think AGIs would converge on the stance-independent moral facts, and they would therefore be moral and thus not pose a significant threat to us. People already say things like this. Here's an example:
https://thedeepdish.substack.com/p/why-i-am-no-longer-an-ai-doomer
So what I mean is that belief in moral realism could cause people to underestimate the risks of AGI for bad reasons. And I'm not even a proponent of high AGI risk. I want our assessments of the risks to be based on good reasons.
Ah, gotcha. The worry is that moral realists are more likely to reject the Orthogonality Thesis, which might cause them to be unduly optimistic about the goals that an AGI will adopt. Thanks for the clarification!
:( is not an emoji, it's an emoticon :)
Ergo, morality is NOT objective.
Do you have to ID as an effective altruist to post?
No!
As a frequent user of the forum, I'd love to see more people who are simply interested in the topics post their thoughts :)
I wrote a reply! https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/n4cNbmAELuKkxD5T2/morality-isn-t-objective
Hmmm perhaps I should write an argument for moral realism, I've wanted to do this for a while. Trouble is, I still don't feel like I adequately understand the claims of subjective morality, so it'd just seem like arguing into a void. But my position basically *is* that subjective morality can't be well-defined (unless it says e.g. "there's no actual morality, but evolution gave us certain arbitrary preferences that we call morality" which is consistent but I have other disagreements with), so I'm a bit stuck. I keep trying to understand what relativists are saying, but I think so much of this stuff is ingrained/assumed/instinctive that it's hard for relativists and realists to communicate with and understand each other. Any suggestions?
OK, I agree that hitting babies with a hammer is morally wrong, in our corner of the multiverse. But are there other possible universes where that same act is morally good because of a different context? If so the subjectivity of morality becomes context-ivity. The "realism" of morality is in the context. And is part of that context what people think and their personal preferences which gets us back to some morality being subjective (context).
You're conflating objective vs subjective wrongness with context dependence vs independence. Something can be objectively wrong in that its wrongness doesn't depend what anyone thinks, but its wrongness might still depend on context.