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Overcoming Bias : Values Are Facts

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Humanity has developed many rich and powerful tools for thinking about “facts”. Our estimates of facts are rich and deeply connected, allowing us to learn much about each fact from all the others. Furthermore, we have many kinds of specialists who deal with particular kinds of facts. However, we also care about “values”, and many say that our ways to think about facts just don’t work for values. They call attention to a “fact-value distinction.” And they develop whole separate ways to discuss values, and whole separate kinds of specialists, with value ways and specialists not much connected to their versions for facts. That seems a mistake to me, as “values” are just another kind of “facts”. They may be an unusually difficult kinds of facts to think about, and there may be specialized tools appropriate for them. But due to values being facts, we should be able to use their connections to other facts to learn much about them. Our estimates of values should be well connected with and int

Values Are Facts Robin Hanson Sep 30, 2022 2 19 Share Humanity has developed many rich and powerful tools for thinking about “facts”. Our estimates of facts are rich and deeply connected, allowing us to learn much about each fact from all the others. Furthermore, we have many kinds of specialists who deal with particular kinds of facts. However, we also care about “values”, and many say that our ways to think about facts just don’t work for values. They call attention to a “fact-value distinction.” And they develop whole separate ways to discuss values, and whole separate kinds of specialists,

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