Nicholas

Unknown, that was interesting and spot on I guess. I must say however, that personally, I didn't think it made sense to think that you could 'agree to disagree' about factual matters if you had the same amount of evidence before I read this blog. That doesn't seem to make sense to me in an elementary way. So I have no problem with cryonics, transhumanism etc. being possibly 'true' - although I haven't the foggiest, most of these thing seem plausible to me. Perhaps what I should have said viz. the 'the other people being biased' thing is that it seems to include values. i.e. we should share the values of EY. This jars somewhat with the meta-ethical anti realisem which is part and parcel of this sort of thoguht. Now again, I guess that the response is that often we actually do have the same values, but we haven't extrapolated far enough in a coherent way.

Wei Dai, Except that traditionally speaking an infinitelly massive universe is generally considered implausable by the greater scientific community.

But I think the greater matter is that even if it were physicially possible, it's impossible to mentally reason about as a reader of good fiction. And thus has the ability to break internal consistancy of an otherwise good store in the mind of the reader.

Thanks,
Indy

"Now, if someone is in a unproblematic, loving relationship; and they have enough money; and no major health problems; and they're signed up for cryonics so death is not approaching inexorably; and they're doing exciting work that they enjoy; and they believe they're having a positive effect on the world...

...and they're still unhappy because it seems to them that the universe is a mere dance of atoms empty of meaning, then we may have a legitimate problem here. One that, perhaps, can only be resolved by a very long discussion of the nature of morality and how it fits into a reductionist universe"

Apart from the cryonics thing (thinking about it), I fit into this category. But I am not holding my breath that you are going to provide any plausible arguments. It would be good if you actually engaged with the literature about this as well, as well as doing your own thing the WHOLE time.

I became a convinced of moral Anti Realism by Joshua Greene and Richard Joyce. Took me about a year to get over it. So, not a casual nihilist. And no, arguments that one should be rational have no normative force either, as far as I can see. The only argument for rationality would be a moral one. Anyway, I became a consequentialist like Greene suggested....