Comment on 'The ethic of hand-washing and community epistemic practice'
LessWrong, March 5, 2009
Abstract
Comment by RobinHanson - The most promising concrete suggestion I see here is to adopt verbal conventions for distinguishing direct and indirect evidence. I’m not sure the word “impression” really connotes direct evidence, though with enough consistent usage in that mode we might carve out a common meaning to that effect. But we actually have a whole range of indirection; where would the cutoff in that range be? If I actually looked something up recently in an encyclopedia, while someone else just vaguely remembers looking it up sometime long ago, is that my impression or my belief?
Quotes from this work
Clearly, Eliezer should seriously consider devoting himself more to writing fiction. But it is not clear to me how this helps us overcome biases any more than any fictional moral dilemma. Since people are inconsistent but reluctant to admit that fact, their moral beliefs can be influenced by which moral dilemmas they consider in what order, especially when written by a good writer. I expect Eliezer chose his dilemmas in order to move readers toward his preferred moral beliefs, but why should I expect those are better moral beliefs than those of all the other authors of fictional moral dilemmas? If I’m going to read a literature that might influence my moral beliefs, I’d rather read professional philosophers and other academics making more explicit arguments. In general, I better trust explicit academic argument over implicit fictional “argument.”