RE: Ethics is an optimization problem

Hi Stochastic thinker,

Thanks for your positive feedback and eloquent reply. I am glad that more people are interested in the subject and have been thinking along the same lines.

I think your reasoning as to why we haven't been forced to weed out any alternative views of morality yet (but might soon have to due to globalization and automation) is largely accurate. However, I don't think necessity is a necessary mother of invention, albeit often a sufficient one. For instance, consider cosmology, high energy particle physics or pure mathematics. Neither of these disciplines have historically been motivated by practical use (although surprisingly many such discoveries have later turned out to be of unexpected use).

I think there might be some additional resistance against progress in the field of ethics that is absent in these more "detached" subjects though. As I alluded to I believe morality evolved, but not only biologically, also culturally and transmitted through socialization. As such it invites to dogma, whose questioning carry large social costs. While this has also to some extent been the case for cosmology and pure mathematics, the methods of theoretical and empirical physics as well as mathematics were already well established by the time they reached this dangerous territory. In contrast, it is hard to even start formulating ethical problem without ruffling some feathers, and while we have empirical morality (as in how people actually make moral decisions) there can be no empirical ethics until we build a solid conceptual foundation.

I am very much looking forward to your coming posts, and future discussions!