I wanted to jot down some “off the top of my head” answers to interesting John Locke Essay Competition questions.
- Do we have any good reason to trust our moral intuition?
- Question: what are we trusting it for? Day-to-day life? Higher-level decision making?
- Yes
- You have no other framework to rely on. Godel’s incompleteness theorem shows that logic isn’t complete. You need a base somewhere to build off.
- your moral intuition is probably a relatively high-fidelity map of what you value, and when making decisions if you have a strong moral intuition, that’s probably a good indicator
- ANY is very broad, and there have to be some good reasons
- Branching off the deliberate practice idea from no: your moral intuitions are what you use for day-to-day decision-making. I’m interpreting the questions as “should you trust your moral intuition to help guide you through day-to-day decision-making?” In this case, you do have good reason to trust your moral intuitions. They have been honed through deliberate practice
- No
- The fact that your moral intuition is a relatively high-fidelity map of what you value isn’t saying much.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow shows that you have a large amount of cognitive biases. Especially important results from the book:
- Your intuitions on any subject are generally inaccurate without deliberate practice, and it’s unlikely that you would have strong deliberate practice
- Actually, wait. This depends on how much people use their moral intuitions for day-to-day decision-making.
- People who regularly use their moral intuitions for day-to-day decision-making with tight feedback loops would find their moral intuitions fairly useful
- Even in this, deliberate practice with moral intuitions probably doesn’t work as well because it’s so hard to evaluate
- People who don’t regularly use their moral intuitions for day-to-day decision-making would find
- People who regularly use their moral intuitions for day-to-day decision-making with tight feedback loops would find their moral intuitions fairly useful
- Actually, wait. This depends on how much people use their moral intuitions for day-to-day decision-making.
- Random events and triggers have a greater influence on you than you might realize (so your moral intuitions might change the next day)
- Your intuitions on any subject are generally inaccurate without deliberate practice, and it’s unlikely that you would have strong deliberate practice
- Thinking, Fast and Slow shows that you have a large amount of cognitive biases. Especially important results from the book:
- Your moral intuitions are mostly a combination of things selected for by evolution + random things that you absorb from others. Those random things are mostly driven by Memetics.
- You easily could have very different moral intuitions in different circumstances
- ”Your moral feelings are attached to frames, to descriptions of reality rather than to reality itself…framing should not be viewed as an intervention that masks or distorts an underlying preference. At least in this instance…there is no underlying preference that is masked or distorted by the frame. Our preferences are about framed problems, and our moral intuitions are about descriptions, not about substance.""
- You easily could have very different moral intuitions in different circumstances
- The fact that your moral intuition is a relatively high-fidelity map of what you value isn’t saying much.
- Is there such a thing as too much democracy?
- Yes
- California
- Myth of the Rational Voter
- Yes
- Why do civilizations collapse? Is our civilization in danger?
- What is the optimal global population?
- Why was sustained economic growth so rare before the later 18th century and why did this change?
- There is an unprecedented epidemic of depression and anxiety among young people. Can we fix this? How?