anonym comments on Rationality Quotes November 2009 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 November 2009 11:36PM

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Comment author: anonym 30 November 2009 06:15:38AM *  2 points [-]

I hadn't clicked through to read the original, but having just done so, I note that the very next paragraph after the given quote is:

Or so we believe. We think we are better informed than they were. Are we? Is our truth more reliable than their truth?

Which doesn't exactly smack of over-confidence and American arrogance to my ear.

ETA: also, from things he said elsewhere in the essay, it seems likely to me that he had in mind more than "a few centuries" in the essay, despite the words in the quote, since he distinguishes again and again between pre-scientific and scientific ways of investigating and understanding the world.

Comment author: Yorick_Newsome 30 November 2009 06:24:09AM 1 point [-]

Oh jeeze, how did I miss that? Thanks for taking the time to enlighten me. About the ETA, I noticed that too, which may be relevant to another discussion I saw nested under the original quotation...