This post is part of a series on morality and mathematics. If you're not into timeless conceptions of physics, you should probably check out the other posts first. I’m swear at some point I’m going to finish up with the sight metaphor and get back to some of the posts I had planned, but in the comments of one of yesterday’s posts, Hendy brought up one idea I really want to address. Hendy said: Essentially, we seem to have honed in on what humans value and made systems that support … [Read more...]
Empirics, Morality, and Rational Ignorance
August 6, 2010 By 10 Comments
Time for another go round of responses to comments on the last two posts in my current series on math and morality: Hendy wrote: So turn this to morality. What if smoking pot was permissible starting tomorrow. A large number of people would now take part in it while many others would consider to hold it wrong. Are their internal sensors faulty? Repeat this with abortion, nation-wide permissibility of gay marriage, etc. Some would immediately partake and others would still hold that it was … [Read more...]
Optimized and Arbitrary (part 2)
August 6, 2010 By 5 Comments
This post is part of a series on math and morality. You can see all previous posts in this sequence at the index Looks like it’s time for a clarification for yesterday’s post. I think David B. is oversimplifying when he says: If a lot of offspring get genes for cooperation and together they are hard-wired build an equilibrium better for all (i.e. what morality does), that would in fact out compete another population without those genes. I think it’s important to remember … [Read more...]
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