Published on July 21, 2025 4:20 PM GMT

I'm not a professional philosopher.  I've done a lot of reading and thinking about decision theory, economic preferences and behaviors, etc.  I think I've absorbed most of LW from the beginning.

We often have posts exploring morality, and I find the premise that it's anything but a social consensus of human preferences to be ... incoherent.  At least outside of the possibility of a deity or other super-physical causal structure.

For those who give significant weight to the possibility that morals are real, in the "acually have some effect on the universe" sense, can you give me a sketch of what kinds of impact it has?  Even if we can't measure it currently, what are the units we'd use if we could?  What IS it, if not "just" our beliefs and preferences about each others' behaviors?