HughRistik comments on Raising the Sanity Waterline - Less Wrong

112 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 March 2009 04:28AM

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Comment author: HughRistik 12 March 2009 08:31:31PM *  1 point [-]

There is no such thing as "normal and crazy." Insanity implies some malfunction of the brain (hence the study of psychopathology is often called "abnormal psychology"). The brains of normal people, including those who believe in religion, are not malfunctioning at all. In fact, they are "working as intended" (strictly speaking, evolution doesn't "intend" anything; the point is that the hardware developed by evolution is showing no defects).

Rationalists are also perfectly sane (I only called them crazy jokingly, which is how they look to normal people), and their brains are also "working as intended." They just have a less typical phenotype.