It’s fun to put various of my foundational non-hot-button-political beliefs in place of “dragons” and see which ones make my mind try to flinch away from thinking that thought for the reasons outlined in this post (i.e. “if I checked and it’s not the way I thought, that would necessitate a lot of expensive and time-consuming updates to what I’m doing”).
the reasons outlined in this post (i.e. “if I checked and it’s not the way I thought, that would necessitate a lot of expensive and time-consuming updates to what I’m doing”).
Wait, that’s not what I’m trying to communicate in the post. If learning that dragons existed would precipitate major updates, it will very often be worth investigating their existence. Instead, it is highly-political low-payoff topics I am intentionally agnostic.
Concrete example: one of my core beliefs is ” :::systems which get their productive capacity mainly from voluntary trade are both more productive and better for the people living under them than systems which get their productive capacity mainly from threats and coercion::: ”. In this example, a “dragon” would be :::a coercion-based system which is more productive than a voluntary-trade-based one::: .
So working through the analogy:
Historically, people who believed in this kind of “dragon”, and who acted on that belief, tended not to behave very nicely.
There are still people who believe in “dragons”. They tend to valorize the actions of past dragon believers to a worrying extent.
I think “dragons” probably don’t exist, but I haven’t actually proven it.
I would prefer to live in a world where “dragons” don’t exist.
If “dragons” did exist, I would feel obligated to spend a lot of time and effort reevaluating my world model and plans.
If I discovered the existence of a “dragon”, and shared that, that would become a defining thing I am known for
Most likely, there wouldn’t be much that I, personally, could do with the information that a “dragon” exists
I guess arguably this is a hot-button political issue in some contexts. The other example I was thinking of was less political had the similar shape of “thing which, if true implies that we can’texpect to maintain certain nice things about the world we live in, and where people believing that the thing is true, if it is in fact true, would hasten the end of the nice things, to the benefit of nobody in particular”.
ETA: On reflection I do agree that this is a different flavor of “nothing good can come of this line of thought” than the one you outlined in your post.
It’s fun to put various of my foundational non-hot-button-political beliefs in place of “dragons” and see which ones make my mind try to flinch away from thinking that thought for the reasons outlined in this post (i.e. “if I checked and it’s not the way I thought, that would necessitate a lot of expensive and time-consuming updates to what I’m doing”).
Wait, that’s not what I’m trying to communicate in the post. If learning that dragons existed would precipitate major updates, it will very often be worth investigating their existence. Instead, it is highly-political low-payoff topics I am intentionally agnostic.
Concrete example: one of my core beliefs is ” :::systems which get their productive capacity mainly from voluntary trade are both more productive and better for the people living under them than systems which get their productive capacity mainly from threats and coercion::: ”. In this example, a “dragon” would be :::a coercion-based system which is more productive than a voluntary-trade-based one::: .
So working through the analogy:
Historically, people who believed in this kind of “dragon”, and who acted on that belief, tended not to behave very nicely.
There are still people who believe in “dragons”. They tend to valorize the actions of past dragon believers to a worrying extent.
I think “dragons” probably don’t exist, but I haven’t actually proven it.
I would prefer to live in a world where “dragons” don’t exist.
If “dragons” did exist, I would feel obligated to spend a lot of time and effort reevaluating my world model and plans.
If I discovered the existence of a “dragon”, and shared that, that would become a defining thing I am known for
Most likely, there wouldn’t be much that I, personally, could do with the information that a “dragon” exists
I guess arguably this is a hot-button political issue in some contexts. The other example I was thinking of was less political had the similar shape of “thing which, if true implies that we can’texpect to maintain certain nice things about the world we live in, and where people believing that the thing is true, if it is in fact true, would hasten the end of the nice things, to the benefit of nobody in particular”.
ETA: On reflection I do agree that this is a different flavor of “nothing good can come of this line of thought” than the one you outlined in your post.