Truth-telling seems clearly overrated (by people on Less Wrong but also pretty much everyone else). Truth-telling (by which I mean not just not-lying but going out of your way and sacrificing your mood, reputation or pleasant socializing just to say something true) is largely indistinguishable from “repeating things you heard once to signal how smart or brave or good you are. ”
Truth-seeking as in observing and doing experiments to discover the structure of the universe and our society still seems incredibly important (modulo the fact that obviously there are all sorts of truths that aren’t actually significant). And I actually think that is true even if you call it information gathering, though ‘information gathering’ is certainly vastly less poetic and lacks the affective valence of Truth.
‘information gathering’ is certainly vastly less poetic and lacks the affective valence of Truth.
“Information gathering” also suggests a stroll in the park, gathering up the information that is just lying around. Getting at the truth is generally harder than that.
Truth-telling seems clearly overrated (by people on Less Wrong but also pretty much everyone else). Truth-telling (by which I mean not just not-lying but going out of your way and sacrificing your mood, reputation or pleasant socializing just to say something true) is largely indistinguishable from “repeating things you heard once to signal how smart or brave or good you are. ”
Truth-seeking as in observing and doing experiments to discover the structure of the universe and our society still seems incredibly important (modulo the fact that obviously there are all sorts of truths that aren’t actually significant). And I actually think that is true even if you call it information gathering, though ‘information gathering’ is certainly vastly less poetic and lacks the affective valence of Truth.
“Information gathering” also suggests a stroll in the park, gathering up the information that is just lying around. Getting at the truth is generally harder than that.