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Eigenmorality

scottaaronson.com

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Re: Eigenmorality

#11

Post by Rangi42 »

bryan_rasmussen wrote: post #9

It seems to me that this would only be of interest if it can be shown that an immoral person is not someone that cooperates with other immoral people but not with moral people.

Do you mean that "moral" should mean "someone who cooperates with others" and "immoral" should mean "someone who does not cooperate with others"? Then "moral" and "immoral" would just mean "cooperative" and "uncooperative," which we already have words for. Plus, morality shouldn't require you to cooperate with immoral people (although whether you should actively punish them or not is the eigenJesus-eigenMoses question).

Re: Eigenmorality

#12

Post by ipsin »

I found the addendum about the time-sequence of bad acts to be the most interesting, in that how you approach the problem leads to another wide spray of outcomes.

Scott mentions the "forget the past" and "address root causes" sides, but how do you deal with things in the middle?

Even being able to provide a model that allows for injustices from centuries ago would be impressive, but how should such things decay? Again, the same pressures come into play, based on the interests of the judged parties.

Re: Eigenmorality

#13

Post by MichaelDickens »

This is an interesting idea. Aaronson may be joking when he says he's "solv[ed] a 2400-year-old open problem in philosophy," but in case he's not, this doesn't come anywhere close to solving ethics. Philosophically speaking, it's still necessary to show why his definition of "moral" holds up. All he's done is assess a certain quality and then call it "morality." I think it could better be called "meta-cooperativeness" or something like that.

I think Aaronson realizes this, because he does talk about how Eigenjesus and Eigenmoses don't accord with our moral intuitions in some cases. He also addresses this somewhat in the section "Scooped by Plato." His major point--that something like Eigenjesus can be useful, even if it cannot deduce terminal values--still holds.

Re: Eigenmorality

#14

Post by MichaelDickens »

This seems related to the idea of coherent extrapolated volition (https://intelligence.org/files/CEV.pdf). Both have some of the same problems--in particular, setting up the system requires making moral judgments about how to do so, so it's not actually value-neutral.

(Aside: If I have two completely different thoughts about an article, should I post them in two separate comments or in the same comment?)

Re: Eigenmorality

#15

Post by knowtheory »

rm445 wrote: post #5
knowtheory wrote: post #2

This is very long but worth reading. The modeling exercise herein is basically attempting to use a game theoretic model to test out some really dumb/simplified models of cooperation and whether the behaviors observed approximate anything approaching what our intuitions might say is moral behavior, up to and including an 'eigenjesus' and 'eigenmoses' up against tit_for_tat bots and the like.

It's very long but written in a light, readable style. What I took away from it was the point late-on about, if we had a PageRank-type system for establishing trust in issues that drive policy (such as climate change), then it would show where a group had left the consensus and formed a separate talking-shop that was trying to shout down the greater consensus. I think this actually applies back to the Iterated Prison…

Yep. My gut reaction to the phrase "eigenmorality" is to immediately turn around and ask "have you ever seen an eigenface?" (see: https://www.google.com/search?q=eigenface&tbm=isch )

They are a certainly a mathematically accurate way to represent a distribution of human faces, but no one would ever confuse it with an actual human face.

And this is one way i view political/policy compromises (which is ultimately where the rubber hits the road regarding morality/ethics). One example is middle ground positions on immigration reform: http://www.vox.com/2014/6/12/5803912/americans-either-want-u...

There are circumstances where opinions fall into a multimodal distribution, and in those situations, taking a policy position that is the global average not only will piss everyone off, but won't necessarily fix the policy problem at hand.

Re: Eigenmorality

#16

Post by minority »

Considering that a majority of people who agree with each other are "moral" is highly problematic. Even if everyone in the system is morally equal, this system would automatically create and enhance differences between groups.

The author uses the example of climate-change deniers to express the opinion that minority groups have "withdrawn itself from the main conversation and retreated into a different discourse."

Is this true of other minority groups - feminists? Homosexuals? Minority ethnic groups? It seems highly awkward to claim the same thing.

A better system would be one which considers how to cater for individuals rather than declaring a populist majority to be a special, protected ingroup. There's enough of the latter already.

Re: Eigenmorality

#17

Post by javert »

Happiness is the only intrinsic value for a human being, and thus a moral person is a person who pursues happiness effectively. (How to do that is another story.) However, Aaronson's proposed definition of a moral person is not the effective way to pursue happiness. Thus, it is immoral.

It's also immoral to call for all of us to sacrifice industrial output for future generations to solve the supposed climate change problem. There is no reason to presume that future generations are more important than the present generation (in fact, it is demonstrably the case that they are not). Thus, this position is profoundly immoral.

However, the implicit assumption that sacrifice is moral is common to most world religions and also altruism, which is probably where he imported it from. All of them are morally bankrupt. A scientist shold be able to be skeptical and see such logical flaws, even if he is not able to propose the correct solution.

Re: Eigenmorality

#18

Post by JackFr »

knowtheory wrote: post #2

This is very long but worth reading. The modeling exercise herein is basically attempting to use a game theoretic model to test out some really dumb/simplified models of cooperation and whether the behaviors observed approximate anything approaching what our intuitions might say is moral behavior, up to and including an 'eigenjesus' and 'eigenmoses' up against tit_for_tat bots and the like.

To each his own. I actually think its overly long, wordy, rambling, poorly conceived and short any novel or important ideas.

Re: Eigenmorality

#19

Post by jng »

JackFr wrote: post #18
knowtheory wrote: post #2

This is very long but worth reading. The modeling exercise herein is basically attempting to use a game theoretic model to test out some really dumb/simplified models of cooperation and whether the behaviors observed approximate anything approaching what our intuitions might say is moral behavior, up to and including an 'eigenjesus' and 'eigenmoses' up against tit_for_tat bots and the like.

To each his own. I actually think its overly long, wordy, rambling, poorly conceived and short any novel or important ideas.

Please tell us what sources you follow that provide you with (a) comparably lucid ideas and (b) not only that, but also in a shorter, clearer form.

I for one want to follow them too if they really exist.

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