Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Almondsetat 13 days ago
I clicked on the article thinking it would be about having a moral stance, when it's clear the author thinks his' is the moral stance
3 comments

Real “I am persecuted for my genius” energy.
Reads like a post straight from r/iamverysmart.
> it's clear the author thinks his' is the moral stance

If you don't think your moral stance is the correct one - then why aren't you changing your moral stance? Why do you have one at all?

It's ok to have strong opinions on morality, and it's cool to live by them, and good to talk about them. I don't happen to completely agree with the author, but I can respect a belief in one's own considered opinion, and the right to express it. No one is being harmed by the author's article.

For example, I have a "strong" moral opinion, which makes many people angry to hear: I don't vote for politicians who arm and enable genocide.

In America, that makes me weird, or worse. I still believe I'm right, and I still talk about it. I firmly believe that cutting out anyone who collaborates on genocide and vetoes ceasefires is the only morally correct move, and happy to talk about why I think that's not just justified and rational but also simply your bare minimum duty as a human being.

That doesn't mean I can't acknowledge that other people feel differently, or that I can't understand where they're coming from with some level of empathy. But it also doesn't mean I have to hang around them. I generally choose not to - genocide enablers squick me out.

The author even explicitly acknowledged that other people have different moral views:

> I will not change my morals or ethics to suit someone else, nor do I expect other people to change theirs.

Along with self awareness and reasonable doubt:

> Does that make me unreasonable? Maybe?

On top of which, the whole diatribe is presented as a "random musing", rather than a demand for you to think differently.

> If you don't think your moral stance is the correct one

That's not what's asserted.

The title is "To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast"

But the reality is "To have his moral stance is to be a self-imposed outcast".

Yes, he thinks his moral stance is the correct one, and lives by it.

... And?

A is an indefinite article.
And a lot of it is silly.

What, we can't use AI even to show it's silly and incomplete? How are people supposed to know the ways it's incomplete if we cannot evaluate it?

First principles?
That would be nice, but the emergent properties of LLMs defy any kind of first-principles reasoning if you ask me.