2026-06-29
edits (but not of actual content) until 2026-09-26
Disclaimer
a
direction: down
title: "What shapes moral values?"
subtitle: "Samuel Shadrach"
date: "June 28, 2026"
title -> subtitle
subtitle -> date
b
direction: down
title: "What shapes people's moral values?" {
near: top-center
shape: text
}
incentives: "" {
i1: "Money"
i2: "Social approval / respect / love / sex / etc"
i3: "Physical injury / death / torture / etc"
}
ideology: "" {
id1: "Politically authoritarian / libertarian"
id2: "Economically left / right"
id3: "Socially left / right"
}
idg: "ideological group"
factors: "" {
f1: "Suffering"
f2: "Incentives"
f3: "Ideology"
}
end: "Alice's moral orientation" {
near: bottom-center
}
steps: {
1: {
incentives -- factors.f2
ideology -- factors.f3
}
2: {
factors.f2 -> factors.f1: "cause"
factors.f1 -> end: "shapes"
}
3: {
end -> factors.f3 : "post-hoc justification"
factors.f3 -> idg : "coordination"
idg -> factors.f2: "applies"
}
}
c
main: "Morality is shaped by personal experiences with suffering"
1: "Incentives shape morality"
2: "Persuading anyone of anything is hard, suffering can persuade people"
3: "Suffering early in life"
4: "Morality as habit"
5: "Power buys you distance from the crime"
main -> 1
main -> 2
main -> 3
main -> 4
main -> 5
d
a: "Reputation and repeated games"
a1: "Honesty"
a2: "Promises of good or harm"
a -> a1
a -> a2
b: "Stable attractors"
b1: "Be predictably nice to everyone"
b2: "Be predictably nice to ingroup, predictably not nice to outgroup"
b -> b1
b -> b2
"Warning: Make sure your ingroup is stable" : {
shape: text
near: bottom-center
}
e
title : "The hard open problem - How to make sure your ideology is actually stable and matches people's experiences?" {
shape: text
near: top-center
}
a: "Classifying ideologies, classifying personality types and personal experiences"
a1: "Three axis political compass\n(Also Vitalik on Big Govt, Big Corporate, Big Mob)"
a2: "Magic the gathering colour wheel\n(Duncan Sabien's interpretation, my further intepretation)"
a3: "Thomas Sowell constrained versus unconstrained visions"
a4: "Internal family systems"
a5: "Big Five personality test"
a6: "Jonathan Haidt moral foundations test"
a7: "???"
a -> a1
a -> a2
a -> a3
a -> a4
a -> a5
a -> a6
a -> a7
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