FeatherlessBiped

Karma: 7

FeatherlessBiped Dec 30, 2011, 11:42 PM
−3 points
in reply to: UnholySmoke’s comment on: Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story
WRT to de-Catholicising your mother: it has been rightly said that Catholicism is the most rational and consistent of all the religions. So, it would be a pity if you dissuaded her from Catholicism and inadvertently landed her in a less rational religion!

FeatherlessBiped Dec 30, 2011, 11:36 PM
1 point
on: Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story
If by “rationalist”, the LW community means someone who believes it is possible and desirable to make at least the most important judgements solely by the use of reason operating on empirically demonstrable facts, then I am an ex-rationalist. My “intellectual stew” had simmered into it several forms of formal logic, applied math, and seasoned with a BS in Computer Science at age 23.

By age 28 or so, I concluded that most of the really important things in life were not amenable to this approach, and that the type of thinking I had learned was useful for earning a living, but was woefully inadequate for other purposes.

At age 50, I am still refining the way I think. I come to LW to lurk, learn, and (occasionally) quibble.

FeatherlessBiped Dec 30, 2011, 11:01 PM
0 points
in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: March 2011
“ETA: In the modern world, most of the positive arguments for the existence of God are (of course) fatally flawed.”

Interesting that you would say “most”. Can we assume you mean there are arguments with merit? Thanks.

FeatherlessBiped Dec 30, 2011, 10:46 PM
5 points
in reply to: Will_Newsome’s comment on: Best of Rationality Quotes, 2011 Edition
Whether Chesterton gets a positive meme or not, he remains awesome! He had a singular talent for focusing a blazing spotlight on various kinds of intellectual foolishness. More remarkably, for someone of such immense literary and intellectual accomplishment, he had an unshakable faith in the good sense of the “average man”.

FeatherlessBiped Dec 30, 2011, 10:29 PM
4 points
on: [Transcript] Tyler Cowen on Stories
Cowen’s talk reminds me of something C.S. Lewis mentioned in one of his books (perhaps it was “Miracles”): what he called, “picture-thinking”.

Lewis noted that when we think about God, for example, many people will think of a kindly old, Caucasian man with a long white beard, sitting in a chair somehow anchored among fluffy white clouds. They will do this even though they know that God is invisible, certainly not male, nor Caucasian.

Lewis’ point was that it’s OK to have the picture in your head, as long as you know it is not literally true. We can posit that the picture may be true and useful in certain other respects (for example, for teaching that God wants to love and be loved as a “father”, and that the kindly old man with the beard image helps us remember that).

The same should be applied to any stories; it ought to be OK to mentally organize certain of our mental storehouse of facts and opinions by telling ourselves stories, just as long as we don’t mistake the story for “the whole enchilada”, nor categorically rule out some story which, on the surface, appears to conflict with it.

Just as a good artisan or technician has a well-stocked toolbox and selects his tool with forethought and uses it with care, the intellectually well-stocked thinker uses multiple tools, ideally in a conscious way.