How many have replied to religious propaganda about the benefits of religion with disdain for invoking mere prudential benefit where truth is at stake?
That’s a particular blindness of most rationalist communities—the disdain for winning through anything but epistemic rationality. I’m encouraged by the many people here who can rationally analyze winning and see that epistemic rationality is only one means to winning.
Beliefs can help you win in a great many ways. Predictive accuracy is only one of those ways, and given the interdependence of humans, predictive accuracy is probably less important for most people than having the beliefs that make for social winning.
What I prefer is to be in a place where the socially winning beliefs are the epistemically accurate beliefs, but that’s more the exception than the rule in this world, at least for “far” beliefs.
That’s a particular blindness of most rationalist communities—the disdain for winning through anything but epistemic rationality. I’m encouraged by the many people here who can rationally analyze winning and see that epistemic rationality is only one means to winning.
Beliefs can help you win in a great many ways. Predictive accuracy is only one of those ways, and given the interdependence of humans, predictive accuracy is probably less important for most people than having the beliefs that make for social winning.
What I prefer is to be in a place where the socially winning beliefs are the epistemically accurate beliefs, but that’s more the exception than the rule in this world, at least for “far” beliefs.