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Furcas comments on Rationality Quotes - July 2009 - Less Wrong
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In other words, let's replace an attempt to understand human history as a result of the moral axioms of its actors with an extremely vague and lazy tautology.
I hear this kind of nonsense all the time when discussing the negative effects of religion. "Oh, it's not because of their religious beliefs that Muslims are more likely to be terrorists than any other religious group, it's because they're people." It's a refusal to try and figure out why people act as they do.
I view it as the opposite. It seems to suggest figuring out what people are rather than throwing up our hands and calling them good/evil/crazy/etc. Kind of like this. YMMV.
You can either throw up your hands or try to come to a greater understanding regardless of whether you call people 'people' or 'evil' or 'crazy', but the last two adjectives are more precise descriptors.
There is no concept of "evil" or "crazy" in objective reality, but there is a concept of "people". The quote reminds us that understanding human behaviour begins by accepting that people do what they do exactly because they are people -- that is, instances of a very specific mental architecture forged by blind evolution in very specific circumstances on this specific planet.
More precise? Yes. More accurate? No. Inaccurate? Yes.
Exactly.