mattnewport comments on But Somebody Would Have Noticed - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Alicorn 04 May 2010 06:56PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (250)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: mattnewport 05 May 2010 09:30:26PM 3 points [-]

But if I learned about a crazy-huge problem that no one is doing anything about, I'd ask "What can we do to solve this problem?"

Perhaps the difference in attitude is our prior beliefs regarding governments and politicians. If I learned that 9/11 was a conspiracy I wouldn't be shocked to discover that government / politicians are morally worse than I thought, I would be shocked to discover that they were more competent and more omnipotent than I thought. It sounds like you would interpret things differently.

Comment author: Nisan 05 May 2010 09:51:36PM 2 points [-]

I would be shocked to discover that they were more competent and more omnipotent than I thought.

Ah, we're in agreement on this point. We are perhaps fortunate that our political leaders can't help but make fools of themselves, individually and collectively, on a regular basis. A political entity that could actually fool everyone all of the time would be way too scary.