I think you’ve lost track of why we were talking about Einstein. In the original post, you listed two reasons to believe non-falsifiable things. I asked you to give an example of the first one. Maybe it wasn’t sufficiently clear that I was asking for an example which wasn’t falsifiable, in which case I apologize, but I was (after all, that’s why it came up in the first place). Relativity is falsifiable. A heuristic that beautiful things tend to be true is also falsifiable.
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Whether or not you do, most people do not optimize for truth. Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing, and in either case, why?
Perhaps it would be easier for me to replace the word happiness with Awesomeness in which case I could see the argument that optimizing for awesomeness would let me seek out ways to make the world more awesome and would allow specific circumstances of what i consider awesome to be to govern which truths to seek out. In this way I can understand optimizing for awesomeness.
I think it is a good thing most people do not optimize for truth because if it were so I don’t think the resulting world would be awesome. It would be a world where many people were less happy even though it would also probably be a world with more scientific advances.
I suppose that if anyone were to optimize for truth it would be a minority who wanted to advance science further to make the general population more happy while the scientist themselves were not always. Even in this case I could understand the argument that they were optimizing awesomeness not truth because they thought the resulting world would be more awesome.
I still don’t see how anything you’ve said about Einstein is relevant to the original question I asked, which was for an example of a belief that you thought was beautiful, non-falsifiable, and worth holding.
I think it is a good thing most people do not optimize for truth because if it were so I don’t think the resulting world would be awesome. It would be a world where many people were less happy even though it would also probably be a world with more scientific advances.
Cool. So we agree now that truth does not trump awesomeness? (Somewhat tangential comment: science is not the only way to seek out truth. I also have in mind things like finding out whether you were adopted.)
You’re right Einstien was not relevant to your original question. I brought him up because I did not understand the question until
I think you’ve lost track of why we were talking about Einstein. In the original post, you listed two reasons to believe non-falsifiable things. I asked you to give an example of the first one. Maybe it wasn’t sufficiently clear that I was asking for an example which wasn’t falsifiable, in which case I apologize, but I was (after all, that’s why it came up in the first place). Relativity is falsifiable. A heuristic that beautiful things tend to be true is also falsifiable.
Thanks for leading me to the conclusion truth does not trump awesomeness and yes I now agree with this.
I also have in mind things like finding out whether you were adopted
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Perhaps it would be easier for me to replace the word happiness with Awesomeness in which case I could see the argument that optimizing for awesomeness would let me seek out ways to make the world more awesome and would allow specific circumstances of what i consider awesome to be to govern which truths to seek out. In this way I can understand optimizing for awesomeness.
I think it is a good thing most people do not optimize for truth because if it were so I don’t think the resulting world would be awesome. It would be a world where many people were less happy even though it would also probably be a world with more scientific advances.
I suppose that if anyone were to optimize for truth it would be a minority who wanted to advance science further to make the general population more happy while the scientist themselves were not always. Even in this case I could understand the argument that they were optimizing awesomeness not truth because they thought the resulting world would be more awesome.
I still don’t see how anything you’ve said about Einstein is relevant to the original question I asked, which was for an example of a belief that you thought was beautiful, non-falsifiable, and worth holding.
Cool. So we agree now that truth does not trump awesomeness? (Somewhat tangential comment: science is not the only way to seek out truth. I also have in mind things like finding out whether you were adopted.)
You’re right Einstien was not relevant to your original question. I brought him up because I did not understand the question until
Thanks for leading me to the conclusion truth does not trump awesomeness and yes I now agree with this.
Good point