it’s one toe out of line and they can never sincerely value and seek truth again.
That’s almost my position, but not quite: mistakes, born of passion (anger, fear, etc.) aren’t fatal. But deliberately deciding to sacrifice truth to achieve something … yeah, there’s no coming back from that.
Does that really seem true to you? Do you have no memories of sacrificing truth for something else you wanted when you were a child, say? I’m not saying it’s just fine to sacrifice truth but it seems false to me to say that people never return to seeking the truth after deceiving themselves, much less after trying on different communication styles or norms. If that were true I feel like no one could ever be rational at all.
I think that’s a misunderstanding of what I mean by “sacrificing truth.” Of course I have lied: I told my mom I didn’t steal from the cookie jar. I have clicked checkboxes saying “I am over 18″ when I wasn’t. I enjoy a game of Mafia as much as the next guy. Contra Kant, I wholeheartedly endorse lying to your enemies to protect your friends.
No, sacrificing truth is fundamentally an act of self-deception. It is making yourself a man who believes a falsehood, or has a disregard for the truth. It is Gandhi taking the murder-pill. That is what I consider irreversible. It’s not so easy that I worry I might do it to myself by accident, so I’m not paranoid about it or anything.
(One way to go about doing this would be to manipulate your language, redefining words as convenient: “The sky is ‘green.’ My definition of the word ‘green’ includes that color. It has always included that color. Quid est veritas?” Doing such things for a while until it becomes habitual should do it.)
In this sense, no, I don’t think I have ever done this. By the time I conceived of the possibility, I was old enough to resolve never to do it.
Of course, the obvious counter is that if you had scifi/magic brain surgery tech, you could erase and rewrite your mind and memories as you wished, and set it to a state where you still sincerely valued truth, so it’s not technically irreversible. My response to that is that a man willing to rewrite his own brain to deceive himself is certainly not one who values truth, and the resultant amnesiac is essentially a different person. But okay, fair enough, if this tech existed, I would reconsider my position on the irreversibility of sacrificing truth via self-deception.
No, sacrificing truth is fundamentally an act of self-deception. It is making yourself a man who believes a falsehood, or has a disregard for the truth. It is Gandhi taking the murder-pill. That is what I consider irreversible.
This is what I was talking about, or the general thing I had in mind, and I think it is reversible. Not a good idea, but I think people who have ever self-deceived or wanted to believe something convenient have come back around to wanting to know the truth. I also think people can be truthseeking in some domains while self-deceiving in others. Perhaps if this weren’t the case, it would be easier to draw lines for acceptable behavior, but I think that unfortunately it isn’t.
Very beside my original point about being willing to speak more plainly, but I think you get that.
That’s almost my position, but not quite: mistakes, born of passion (anger, fear, etc.) aren’t fatal. But deliberately deciding to sacrifice truth to achieve something … yeah, there’s no coming back from that.
Does that really seem true to you? Do you have no memories of sacrificing truth for something else you wanted when you were a child, say? I’m not saying it’s just fine to sacrifice truth but it seems false to me to say that people never return to seeking the truth after deceiving themselves, much less after trying on different communication styles or norms. If that were true I feel like no one could ever be rational at all.
I think that’s a misunderstanding of what I mean by “sacrificing truth.” Of course I have lied: I told my mom I didn’t steal from the cookie jar. I have clicked checkboxes saying “I am over 18″ when I wasn’t. I enjoy a game of Mafia as much as the next guy. Contra Kant, I wholeheartedly endorse lying to your enemies to protect your friends.
No, sacrificing truth is fundamentally an act of self-deception. It is making yourself a man who believes a falsehood, or has a disregard for the truth. It is Gandhi taking the murder-pill. That is what I consider irreversible. It’s not so easy that I worry I might do it to myself by accident, so I’m not paranoid about it or anything.
(One way to go about doing this would be to manipulate your language, redefining words as convenient: “The sky is ‘green.’ My definition of the word ‘green’ includes that color. It has always included that color. Quid est veritas?” Doing such things for a while until it becomes habitual should do it.)
In this sense, no, I don’t think I have ever done this. By the time I conceived of the possibility, I was old enough to resolve never to do it.
Of course, the obvious counter is that if you had scifi/magic brain surgery tech, you could erase and rewrite your mind and memories as you wished, and set it to a state where you still sincerely valued truth, so it’s not technically irreversible. My response to that is that a man willing to rewrite his own brain to deceive himself is certainly not one who values truth, and the resultant amnesiac is essentially a different person. But okay, fair enough, if this tech existed, I would reconsider my position on the irreversibility of sacrificing truth via self-deception.
This is what I was talking about, or the general thing I had in mind, and I think it is reversible. Not a good idea, but I think people who have ever self-deceived or wanted to believe something convenient have come back around to wanting to know the truth. I also think people can be truthseeking in some domains while self-deceiving in others. Perhaps if this weren’t the case, it would be easier to draw lines for acceptable behavior, but I think that unfortunately it isn’t.
Very beside my original point about being willing to speak more plainly, but I think you get that.