“So at the end of the day, I embrace the principle: ‘Question your brain, question your intuitions, question your principles of rationality, using the full current force of your mind, and doing the best you can do at every point.’”
. . . to the extent that doing so increases your power, as illustrated by the principle you embrace to a greater extent:
“The point is to win.”
That’s the faith position.
“Everything, without exception, needs justification.”
. . . except that toward which justification is aimed: power.
“The important thing is to hold nothing back in your criticisms of how to criticize . . .”
Yet you do, as illustrated by your power, which is actually that toward which you are applying full force, playing to win. Rationalism is great to the extent it is empowering. To the extent it weakens us, we abandon it.
“Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
“So at the end of the day, I embrace the principle: ‘Question your brain, question your intuitions, question your principles of rationality, using the full current force of your mind, and doing the best you can do at every point.’”
. . . to the extent that doing so increases your power, as illustrated by the principle you embrace to a greater extent:
“The point is to win.”
That’s the faith position.
“Everything, without exception, needs justification.”
. . . except that toward which justification is aimed: power.
“The important thing is to hold nothing back in your criticisms of how to criticize . . .”
Yet you do, as illustrated by your power, which is actually that toward which you are applying full force, playing to win. Rationalism is great to the extent it is empowering. To the extent it weakens us, we abandon it.
“Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
― Leo Tolstoy- Anna Karenina
Tolstoy sounds ignorant of game theory—probably because he was dead when it was formulated.
Long story short, non-cooperating organisms regularly got throttled by cooperating ones, which is how we evolved to be cooperating.