Harry Nyquist's Shortform

post by Harry Nyquist (harry-nyquist) · 2023-03-25T00:33:51.634Z · LW · GW · 4 comments

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comment by Harry Nyquist (harry-nyquist) · 2023-08-13T15:28:03.448Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Here's a fun one. If there's a distribution of how morally correct people are.
Imagine that makes sense for a second, picking whatever definition you like.
Where do you think you are on it?
Maybe in the right direction. People tend to think they're doing the right thing.
How do you know if you're wrong, how do you know what the person who's furthest along in the "right direction" sees?

Replies from: Dagon
↑ comment by Dagon · 2023-08-14T16:48:25.803Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Is this just a funny cover on top of "what if there were such a thing as moral correctness"?  The distribution doesn't matter (or exist) if the underlying measure is incoherent.

Replies from: harry-nyquist
↑ comment by Harry Nyquist (harry-nyquist) · 2023-08-16T20:58:28.269Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think I'm trying to say something about the place where the tails don't yet diverge too far yet, as if there is some sort of rough consensus morality zone where people might disagree on details but agree sufficiently with each other to disagreeing with me, about myself. But maybe I'm confused and that's still incoherent (sorry)!

I wonder if I might have a wrong impression of myself. Maybe people who I see doing ethical things that I don't do, who I would put above me in my personal version of an ethics distribution, would form a rough consensus where I'm in a worse percentile on average than I'd have guessed

I'm holding to this idea that it's meaningful to consider in what percentile other people would put you, according to their own metric, and then do statistics over that, but I am neither a statistician nor a clever person so I'd be happy to be corrected :)

Replies from: Dagon
↑ comment by Dagon · 2023-08-16T21:11:45.972Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Hmm.  I wonder if you could something like "moral admiration" - how people evaluate each other, without recourse to any concept of correctness. This would not be consistent nor transitive (a rating b highly, and b rating c highly doesn't imply that a rates c highly), but it might be possible to find patterns or local clusters of agreement.