This is a reaction to John Wentworth's post Human Values ≠ Goodness. In the post, John argues that the human concept of goodness comes apart from human values, and (perhaps more to John's point) your values. I agree with this distinction. Nor am I disagreeing with John when he calls goodness a "memetic egregore".

Where I disagree with John is in his desire to cast aside goodness, to wriggle out from under its thumb. John does provide some words of caution in this regard, essentially saying that goodness is too useful a coordination tool to discard recklessly, but once we've accounted for that instrumental value, we should discard the rest.

My argument here will be somewhat similar in flavor to The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis.

John identifies values as yumminess, and calls upon the reader to notice the difference between these yummy things and what society calls "good". John's yumminess sounds like what C.S. Lewis calls "appetite". C.S. Lewis refers to those who govern decisions by appetite alone "men without chests" or "trousered apes". In contrast, C.S. Lewis recommends participating in what he calls the "Tao", which I understand as the 300-mellinia-long dialogue amongst humans about [...]

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Outline:

(01:34) Even Values are Aggregate

(04:16) Goodness as Negotiated Aggregation

(06:00) Goodness ≠ Human Values

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 19th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tiMDjEPkqWQZJdhHY/in-defense-of-goodness

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“In Defense of Goodness” by abramdemski

LessWrong (30+ Karma)