yawn
Most people who devote the necessary thought to the matter eventually realize that they are pathological, deeply so, and that significant work-arounds are the only way to compensate for the irrevocable faults hardwired into their minds.
It’s not a question of whether, it’s a question of how.
“Sanity” is not well-defined, here.
There are plenty of people just as sociopathic as John, and just as dangerous as John but more so, who would not be considered insane or perceived as dangerous by society at large.
Most people in positions of power have strong sociopathic tendencies. It’s just that many of them conform sufficiently well with society’s expectations that they’re not recognized as threats.
There are limits to the degree to which fnords can be discussed with others. Without doing the hard work necessary to perceive them, others cannot receive benefit from having them pointed out to them—and that can even be harmful, as our mental immune systems will construct defensive rationalizations to protect fnords brought to our attention that we’re not strong enough to abolish.
The main issue is that we might be driving people away, and there are at least a few people for whom it is true.
Whether this is a problem depends on the people being driven away, and why.
Those are excellent points, particularly the first. Adolf Hitler was one of the most effective rhetoricians in human history—his public speaking skills were simply astounding. Even the people who hated his message were stunned after attending rallies in which Hitler exercised his crowd-manipulation skills.
I don’t think this post counts as ‘trolling’. Certainly the desired responses to it could be used to troll, but that’s not at all the same thing.
Clarity. The first depends on the interpretation of “abuse”, and as such I think it’s very likely that many people will agree with it to some degree.
The second is much more precise; although I think it is demonstrably untrue, I expect it will draw much reflexive denial.
These are excellent examples. I don’t see why they’re being voted down.
The second, however, is much better than the first.
Self-perpetuation in the strictest sense isn’t always the point. The goal isn’t to simply impose the same structure onto the future over and over again. It’s continuity between structures that’s important.
Wanting to live a long life isn’t the same as having oneself frozen so that the same physical configuration of the body will persist endlessly. The collapse of ecosystems over a hundred-million-year-long timespan is not a failure, no more than our changing our minds constitutes a failure of self-preservation.
I can’t think of any particular issues that I’m convinced I know the truth of, yet most people will reflexively deny that truth completely.
I can, however, think of issues that I think are uncertain, but that the uncertainty of said issue is denied reflexively and completely. I suppose they would be meta-issues rather than issues themselves—it’s a subtle point I’m not interested in pursuing.
Probably the most obvious one that comes to my mind is circumcision. I’ve never seen so many normally-intelligent people make such stupid and clearly incorrect arguments, nor so much uncomfortable humor, nor trying desperately to avoid thinking, for any other issue I’ve discussed with others, even things like abortion, religion, and politics.
Bujold sometimes appears to argue for theism, but a very peculiar form of it that doesn’t really match what most people mean by the term.
In some ways she seems to be a theological consequentialist—suggesting that people are better for believing that other people have souls, or at least acting as though they believe that other people have souls, regardless of whether it’s literally true.
Cordelia Vorkosigan’s religious beliefs are rather… odd. This is particularly clear in one exchange from Mirror Dance:
It’s important that someone celebrate our existence… People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large.
Cordelia claims to be a theist. How can that claim be reconciled with her statement above?
But, if you read his essays with an eye toward the workings of the mind, specifically how humans think when they theorize (which I consider his main topic) you will find useful things there that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
I disagree. His logical errors are quite common; he serves as a good example of failure, yes, but such is rarely hard to find.
Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold.
It’s a great story, but there’s one scene in it that permanently changed my understanding of rationality: Leo Graf’s first lecture to the engineering class where he discusses the relationship between engineering and ethics. The argument applies to all science and ways of applying scientific knowledge—really, to any and all attempts to interact with reality.
This is a really spectacular post.
One quibble: in the case being discussed, one variable is actually a property of the other variable, rather than another thing that is affected by something else.
Is it really appropriate to say that A causes B when B is just a property of A?
We’re not retarded. We’re advanced
A lie is a knowing statement of untruth, almost always made in the hope that it will be mistaken for a sincere statement of truth.
Deception is far larger than lies.
As for intent—it’s difficult to show, and depends partly on the qualities of the listener. Especially stupid and small-minded people often accuse others of trying to deceive them when the real problem was that they leapt to an invalid conclusion. My experience is that people without a great deal of self-candor will often accuse others of deception rather than considering the possibility that they themselves were dumb.
Yes. But that isn’t the point. It holds across all deaths, not those necessarily caused by the error.
In the first section, yes. In the later sections, no.
Preferring minimal changes, I’ve altered the sentence you had a problem with—but not in the way you suggested. Your way is fine, too. I just like mine better.
That’s certainly an issue, probably a contributing one. But the statistics strongly suggest that autopsy results aren’t used to reduce error, as doctors are just as wrong now as they were eighty years ago.
Categorical imperatives that result in persistence will accumulate.
Why should any lifeform preserve its own existence? There’s no reason. But those that do eventually dominate existence. Those that do not, are not.