It’s an interesting approach, and here’s why I think it’s a bad idea.
Scripture implies curation and canonization. In the literal sense—an authority chooses which texts are foundational to a belief set. Rationality has no such authority (not even the authors of the examples given). In fact, rationality includes a belief that any attempt at such authority should be viewed with skepticism.
I understand what you’re saying, we don’t have or want a prophet, and there are all kinds of things we believe that we wouldn’t want to canonize. However, there are a few things we all agree on right? Bayes Theorem + Gathering Data + certain rules of inference + …?
I suspect that there’s more variance than you imply in how (and whether) to apply those mathematical truths to non-trivial real-world agents and decisions. I’d be happy to be proven wrong—you can probably make a wiki page for a “near-universal rationalist beliefs” list.
It’s an interesting approach, and here’s why I think it’s a bad idea.
Scripture implies curation and canonization. In the literal sense—an authority chooses which texts are foundational to a belief set. Rationality has no such authority (not even the authors of the examples given). In fact, rationality includes a belief that any attempt at such authority should be viewed with skepticism.
Haha! I love your first line.
I understand what you’re saying, we don’t have or want a prophet, and there are all kinds of things we believe that we wouldn’t want to canonize. However, there are a few things we all agree on right? Bayes Theorem + Gathering Data + certain rules of inference + …?
I suspect that there’s more variance than you imply in how (and whether) to apply those mathematical truths to non-trivial real-world agents and decisions. I’d be happy to be proven wrong—you can probably make a wiki page for a “near-universal rationalist beliefs” list.