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Claude's new constitution

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Re: Claude's new constitution

#511

Post by teiferer »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #425
teiferer wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the only way. An alternative is to organize the world in a way that makes it not just unnecessary but even more so detrimental to said soldier's interests to launch a missle towards your house in the first place. The sentence you wrote wouldn't be something you write about (present day) German or French soldiers. Why? Because there are cultural and economic ties to those countries, their people. Shared value…

I'm in Ukraine now. Tell me how your ideals apply to russia, today.

In the short run, today, you of course have to shoot back. What else can you do..

In the long run, just piling up more military is not the solution.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#512

Post by ben_w »

skissane wrote: post #493
ben_w wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think anyone actually rejects that. And those who do tend to find themselves in prison or the grave pretty quickly, because violating that rule is something other humans have very little tolerance for. I have bad news for you about the extremely long list of historical atrocities over the millennia of recorded history, and how few of those involved saw any punishment for participating in them.

But those aren't actually counterexamples to my principle. The Nazis murdered numerous babies in the Holocaust. But they weren't doing it "for sport". They claimed it was necessary to protect the Aryan race, or something like that; which is monstrously idiotic and evil – but not a counterexample to “Do not torture babies for sport”. They believed there were acceptable reasons to kill innocents–but mere sport was not…

I didn't say "Nazis", and I did say "millennia"; despite the words "thousand year reich", they did not last very long.

The examples I have in mind include things predating the oldest known city in the area now known as Germany in some cases, and collectively span multiple continents.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#513

Post by skissane »

ben_w wrote: post #512
skissane wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those aren't actually counterexamples to my principle. The Nazis murdered numerous babies in the Holocaust. But they weren't doing it "for sport". They claimed it was necessary to protect the Aryan race, or something like that; which is monstrously idiotic and evil – but not a counterexample to “Do not torture babies for sport”. They believed there were acceptable reasons to kill innocents–but mere sport was not…

I didn't say "Nazis", and I did say "millennia"; despite the words "thousand year reich", they did not last very long. The examples I have in mind include things predating the oldest known city in the area now known as Germany in some cases, and collectively span multiple continents.

In none of those examples were people harming/killing babies for the sole or primary reason of "harming/killing babies is fun", so they aren't counterexamples to my principle.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#514

Post by jychang »

skissane wrote: post #504
jychang wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree. Your argument basically is a professional motte and bailey fallacy. And you cannot conclude objectivity by consensus. Physicists by consensus concluded that Newton was right, and absolute... until Einstein introduced relativity. You cannot do "proofs by feel". I argue that you DO need to answer the deep problems in mathematics to prove that 1+1=2, even if it feels objective- that's precisely why Prin…

> Your argument basically is a professional motte and bailey fallacy. No it isn't. A "motte-and-bailey fallacy" is where you have two versions of your position, one which makes broad claims but which is difficult to defend, the other which makes much narrower claims but which is much easier to justify, and you equivocate between them. I'm not doing that. A "companion-in-the-guilt" argument is different. It is taking…

> But Principia Mathematica was (to a significant degree) a dead-end in the history of mathematics. Most practicing mathematicians have rejected PM's type theory in favour of simpler axiomatic systems such as ZF(C). Even many professional type theorists will quibble with some of the details of Whitehead and Russell's type theory, and argue there are superior alternatives. And you are effectively assuming a formalist philosophy of mathematics, which is highly controversial, many reject, and few would consider "proven".

Yeah, exactly. I intentionally set that trap. You're actually arguing for my point. I've spent comments writing on the axioms of geometry, and you didn't think I was familiar with the axioms of ZFC? I was thinking of bringing up CH the entire time. The fact that you can have alternate axioms was my entire point all along. Most people are just way more familiar with the 5 laws of geometry than the 9 axioms of ZFC.

The fact that PM was an alternate set of axioms of mathematics, that eventually wilted when Godel and ZF came along, underscores my point that defining a set axioms is hard. And that there is no clear defined set of axioms for philosophy.

I don't have to accept your argument against objectivity in ethics, because I can still say that the system IS objective- it just depends on what axioms you pick! ZF has different proofs than ZFC. Does the existence of both ZF and ZFC make mathematics non objective? Obviously not! The same way, the existence of both deontology and consequentialism doesn't necessarily make either one less objective than the other.

Anyways, the Genghis Khan example clearly operates as a proof by counterexample of your example of objectivity, so I don't even think quibbling on mathematical formalism is necessary.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#515

Post by pibaker »

Huhyuh67 wrote: post #507
pibaker wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do not torture babies for sport There are millions of people who consider abortion murder of babies and millions who don't. This is not settled at all.

I'm quite interested to hear how you think this refutes the parent comment? Are you saying that someone who supports legalised abortion would disagree with the quoted text?

No. I think the opposite is true. Those who consider abortion murder can claim that we do not in fact universally condemn the murder of babies because abortion is legal and widely practiced in many places.

Some may consider abortion to only kill a fetus rather than a fully formed baby and thus not murder. Others disagree because they consider a fetus a baby in its own right. This raises a more fundamental question about the validity of any supposedly universal morality. When you apply rules like "don't torture baby" to real life, you will have to decide what constitutes as a baby in real life, and it turns out the world is way messier than a single word can describe.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#516

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

teiferer wrote: post #511
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Ukraine now. Tell me how your ideals apply to russia, today.

In the short run, today, you of course have to shoot back. What else can you do.. In the long run, just piling up more military is not the solution.

> In the long run, just piling up more military is not the solution.

Except it would have prevented the invasion in the first place.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#517

Post by Antibabelic »

jychang wrote: post #506

[flagged]

Your response seems AI-generated (or significantly AI-”enhanced”), so I’m not going to bother responding to any follow-ups.

> More importantly, your framework cannot account for moral progress!

I don’t think “moral progress” (or any other kind of “progress”, e.g. “technological progress”) is a meaningful category that needs to be “accounted for”.

> Why does "hunting babies" feel similar to "torturing prisoners" but different from "eating chicken"?

I can see “hunting babies” being more acceptable to “torturing prisoners” to many people. Many people don’t consider babies on par with grown-up humans due to their limited neurological development and consciousness. Vice versa, many people find the idea of eating chicken abhorrent and would say that a society of meat-eaters is worse than a thousand Nazi Germanies. This is not a strawman I came up with, I’ve interacted with people who hold this exact opinion, and I think from their perspective it is justified.

> [Without a moral framework you have] no way to reason about novel cases

You can easily reason about novel cases without a moral framework. It just won’t be moral reasoning (which wouldn’t add anything in itself). Is stabbing a robot to death okay? We can think about in terms of how I feel about it. It’s kinda human-shaped, so I’d probably feel a bit weird about it. How would others react to me stabbing it this way? They’d probably feel similarly. Plus, it’s expensive electronics, people don’t like wastefulness. Would it be legal? Probably.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#518

Post by eloisant »

skissane wrote: post #495
sroussey wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you consider torture? and what do you consider sport? During war in the Middle Ages? Ethnic cleansing? What did they consider at the time? BTW: it’s a pretty American (or western) value that children are somehow more sacred than adults. Eventually we will realize in 100 years or so, that direct human-computer implant devices work best when implanted in babies. People are going freak out. Some country will leg…

> What do you consider torture? and what do you consider sport? By "torturing babies for sport" I mean inflicting pain or injury on babies for fun, for pleasure, for enjoyment, as a game or recreation or pastime or hobby. Doing it for other reasons (be they good reasons or terrible reasons) isn't "torturing babies for sport". Harming or killing babies in war or genocide isn't "torturing babies for sport", because you…

> As a non-American, I find bizarre the suggestion that crimes against children are especially grave is somehow a uniquely American value.

I don't know if it's American but it's not universal, especially if you go back in time.

There was a time in Europe where children were considered a bit like wild animals who needed to be "civilized" as they grow up into adults, who had a good chance of dying of sickness before they reach adulthood anyway, and who were plenty because there was not much contraception.

Also fathers were considered as "owners" of their children and allowed to do pretty much they wanted with them.

In this context, of course hurting children was bad but it wasn't much worse than hurting an adult.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#519

Post by jychang »

Antibabelic wrote: post #517
jychang wrote: post #506

[flagged]

Your response seems AI-generated (or significantly AI-”enhanced”), so I’m not going to bother responding to any follow-ups. > More importantly, your framework cannot account for moral progress! I don’t think “moral progress” (or any other kind of “progress”, e.g. “technological progress”) is a meaningful category that needs to be “accounted for”. > Why does "hunting babies" feel similar to "torturing prisoners" but d…

[flagged]

Re: Claude's new constitution

#520

Post by donkeybeer »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #354
foxygen wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be a good starting point? And why only some of them? What is the process behind objectively finding out which ones are good and which ones are bad?

It's a good starting point because the commandments were given by God. And without God, there is no objective moral standard. Everything, including your opinion on my point of view, is subjective and relative. Whatever one would want to call "good" or "evil" would just be a matter of opinion.

Thats all very nice, but first prove god.

If you are done solving that question, next prove that the book you favor is from god. There's a lot of competition for this claim as you know.

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