Dustin comments on The Value of Nature and Old Books - Less Wrong

7 Post author: David_J_Balan 25 October 2009 06:14PM

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Comment author: Dustin 26 October 2009 01:44:38AM 3 points [-]

I would say that the main thing that makes nature special in this sense is that when you are in nature or contemplating nature, you can be confident that the resulting thoughts and feelings are uncontaminated by all of the (visible and invisible) ideas and biases and assumptions that are present in your particular time and place.

Uncontaminated by the wishes of my fellow humans, yes. Uncontaminated by eons of biases built in to my brain, no. I'm not sure why one is preferable to the other.

Comment author: David_J_Balan 26 October 2009 05:02:26AM 2 points [-]

If there was something that could get you out of your own biases, if only for a little while, that would be even better! But I sure don't know how to do that.

Comment author: Dustin 26 October 2009 09:30:50PM 1 point [-]

But why are the biases we're giving up when we leave the influence of people worse than the biases we're activating when we're in the presence of nature?