Your worldview and your choice of people whose opinion to respect don’t have to be selected rationally. I would argue, in fact, that a large proportion of people don’t choose these rationally.
An alarmingly large fraction of Americans believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago, a position that most people here would find irrational. This is a worldview that is most often acquired from one’s parents or from respected religious figures. Would such a worldview be considered to be rationally selected?
Other people hold the position that humans evolved from earlier primates over millions of years through evolution by natural selection. Many of these people don’t understand evolution well enough to hold it as a rational belief, and they may also have acquired this belief through their parents or other respected figures rather than by a reasoned analysis. I’ve been asked by someone who accepts evolution: “Wouldn’t it be great if humans would evolve wings! That would increase fitness, why doesn’t that happen?” [paraphrased]
I think it’s not controversial to say that peoples’ worldviews and authority figures are not selected rationally.
True, but the way they irrationally found those is what’s in error, not using them. This is sort of like having a bad prior and blaming Bayes’ Theorem.
Your worldview and your choice of people whose opinion to respect don’t have to be selected rationally. I would argue, in fact, that a large proportion of people don’t choose these rationally.
An alarmingly large fraction of Americans believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago, a position that most people here would find irrational. This is a worldview that is most often acquired from one’s parents or from respected religious figures. Would such a worldview be considered to be rationally selected?
Other people hold the position that humans evolved from earlier primates over millions of years through evolution by natural selection. Many of these people don’t understand evolution well enough to hold it as a rational belief, and they may also have acquired this belief through their parents or other respected figures rather than by a reasoned analysis. I’ve been asked by someone who accepts evolution: “Wouldn’t it be great if humans would evolve wings! That would increase fitness, why doesn’t that happen?” [paraphrased]
I think it’s not controversial to say that peoples’ worldviews and authority figures are not selected rationally.
True, but the way they irrationally found those is what’s in error, not using them. This is sort of like having a bad prior and blaming Bayes’ Theorem.