Well, choosing to believe lies that are widely believed is certainly convenient, in that it does not put me at risk of conflict with my tribe, does not require me to put in the effort of believing one thing while asserting belief in another to avoid such conflict, and does not require me to put in the effort of carefully evaluating those beliefs.
Whether it’s useful—that is, whether believing a popular lie leaves me better off in the long run than failing to believe it—I’m not so sure. For example, can you clarify how your belief about the impossibility of simulating intelligence with an unintelligent system, supposing it’s false, leaves you better off than if you knew the truth?
O.k. suppose It’s false. Rather than wasting time disproving the CRA, I simply act on my “false” belief and reject it out of hand. Since the CRA is invalid for many other reasons as well, I’m still right. Win.
Generalizing;
Say I have an approximation that usually gives me the right answer, but on rare occasion gives a wrong one. If I work through a much more complicated method, I can arrive at the correct answer. I believe the approximation is correct. As long as; effort involved in complicated method > cost of being wrong I’m better off not using it. If I knew the truth, then I could still use the approximation, but I now have an extra step in my thinking. Instead of;
Ah, I see what you mean. Sure, agreed: as long as the false beliefs I arrive at using method A, which I would have avoided using method B, cost me less to hold than the additional costs of B, I do better with method A despite holding more false beliefs. And, sure, if the majority of false-belief-generating methods have this property, then it follows that I do well to adopt false-belief-generating methods as a matter of policy.
I don’t think that’s true of the world, but I also don’t think I can convince you of that if your experience of the world hasn’t already done so.
I’m reminded of a girl I dated in college who had a favorite card trick: she would ask someone to pick a card, then say “Is your card the King of Clubs?” She was usually wrong, of course, but she figured that when she was right it would be really impressive.
Well, choosing to believe lies that are widely believed is certainly convenient, in that it does not put me at risk of conflict with my tribe, does not require me to put in the effort of believing one thing while asserting belief in another to avoid such conflict, and does not require me to put in the effort of carefully evaluating those beliefs.
Whether it’s useful—that is, whether believing a popular lie leaves me better off in the long run than failing to believe it—I’m not so sure. For example, can you clarify how your belief about the impossibility of simulating intelligence with an unintelligent system, supposing it’s false, leaves you better off than if you knew the truth?
O.k. suppose It’s false. Rather than wasting time disproving the CRA, I simply act on my “false” belief and reject it out of hand. Since the CRA is invalid for many other reasons as well, I’m still right. Win.
Generalizing; Say I have an approximation that usually gives me the right answer, but on rare occasion gives a wrong one. If I work through a much more complicated method, I can arrive at the correct answer. I believe the approximation is correct. As long as;
effort involved in complicated method > cost of being wrong
I’m better off not using it. If I knew the truth, then I could still use the approximation, but I now have an extra step in my thinking. Instead of;
Approximate.
Reject.
it’s
Approximate.
Ignore possibility of being wrong.
Reject.
Ah, I see what you mean. Sure, agreed: as long as the false beliefs I arrive at using method A, which I would have avoided using method B, cost me less to hold than the additional costs of B, I do better with method A despite holding more false beliefs. And, sure, if the majority of false-belief-generating methods have this property, then it follows that I do well to adopt false-belief-generating methods as a matter of policy.
I don’t think that’s true of the world, but I also don’t think I can convince you of that if your experience of the world hasn’t already done so.
I’m reminded of a girl I dated in college who had a favorite card trick: she would ask someone to pick a card, then say “Is your card the King of Clubs?” She was usually wrong, of course, but she figured that when she was right it would be really impressive.