= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
simplicio comments on The Tragedy of the Social Epistemology Commons - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (67)
One simple idea is to make rationality more popular, but even if that worked, it would probably just make "rationality" more popular, where "rationality" is defined as screaming that your opponents are irrational.
Another possibility is to increase elitism in government and business wrt mathematical & scientific knowledge - this wouldn't help the public at large be rational but it would at least avoid innumerate policy-makers to a certain extent.
I think perhaps the most important thing we could do, though, would be to aspire to becoming more well-rounded humans ourselves. The trouble with rationalists is that we aren't typically the kind of people one appreciates unless one is already a rationalist. But a genuine phronimos is a very magnetic personality, a real rolemodel, because they have all the other graces as well. A personality like, say, Stephen Lewis, promoting rationalism - now that would be a force. (Don't get me wrong, what he has been doing is more important).
Listening to John Lee Clary the former klansman talk about how he came to lose his certainty in that ideology reminded me of this issue.
The reverend Wade Watts of whom he speaks basically eats away at his defenses by setting a moral example for him. Take heed! People will rarely judge us purely on our ideas, so in a war of rhetoric, it is also skillfully applied pathos that is needed.
It's not just about being more moral, at least as morality is generally understood.
It's also about putting morality and mental superiority into action by being funny without being mean.
And I don't trust that the last bit happened, even though the rest of it might be true.
"Whatever you do to that chicken, I'm going to do to you" is part of an old joke, and really rather an unlikely threat.
The version I'd heard (NPR's "A Christmas Griot" and my favorite part of the show) involved a whole chicken and kissing it on the ass.
I would say, not wrong but insufficient. I like the distinction that virtue ethics makes: sophia is wisdom in the sense of thinking correctly about facts, whereas phronesis is practical wisdom; i.e., "doing the right things, to the right people, at the right time."