Yvain comments on The Mystery of the Haunted Rationalist - Less Wrong

69 Post author: Yvain 08 March 2009 08:39PM

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Comment author: gjm 09 March 2009 01:27:24AM 12 points [-]

I like the idea, except that to me it seems somehow dishonest: to wish for something is (inter alia) to state that one wants it to happen, which I assume was not true in this case. And I think reluctance to be dishonest even when no one else is going to be deceived is a valuable emotion, to counter self-deception.

This might just be rationalization (introspecting, it seems to me that I'd be reluctant to do as you did), but I don't think so because similar introspection suggests that I'd be (e.g.) quite unafraid to learn that some group of religious people were praying for my death, unless there were some risk that they or their friends might try to bring it about by natural means.