RichardKennaway comments on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think - Less Wrong

15 Post author: WrongBot 13 July 2010 04:44AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 13 July 2010 02:16:20PM 14 points [-]

A thousand times no. Really, this is a bad idea.

Yeah, some people don't value truth at any cost. And there's some sense to that. When you take a little bit of knowledge and it makes you a bad person, or an unhappy person, I can understand the argument that you'd have been better off without that knowledge.

But most of the time, I believe, if you keep thinking and learning, you'll come round right. (I.e.: when a teenager reads Ayn Rand and thinks that gives him license to be an asshole, his problem is not that he reads too much philosophy.)

You seem to be particularly worried about accidentally becoming a bigot. (I don't think most of us are in any danger of accidentally becoming supreme dictators.) I think you are safe. Think of it this way: you don't want to be a bigot. You don't want your future self to be a bigot either. So don't behave like one. No matter what you read. Commit your future self to not being an asshole.

I think fear of brainwashing is generally silly.* You will not become a Mormon from reading the Book of Mormon. You will not become a Nazi from reading Mein Kampf, or a Communist from reading Das Kapital. You will not become a racist from reading Steve Sailer. I don't think we are such fragile creatures. Just keep an even keel and behave like a decent person, and you're free to read whatever you like.

*Actual brainwashing -- overriding your own sanity and reason -- is possible, but I think it requires a total environment, like a cult compound or an interrogation room. It's not something that reading a book can do to you.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 13 July 2010 02:49:27PM 12 points [-]

But most of the time, I believe, if you keep thinking and learning, you'll come round right. (I.e.: when a teenager reads Ayn Rand and thinks that gives him license to be an asshole, his problem is not that he reads too much philosophy.)

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."

-- Pope

Comment author: SilasBarta 13 July 2010 04:43:10PM *  4 points [-]

That sounds like my (provisional) resolution the conflict between "using all you know" and "don't be a bigot": you should incorporate the likelihood ratio of things that a person can't control, so long as you also observe and incorporate evidence that could outweigh such statistical, aggregate, nonspecific knowledge.

So drink deep (use all evidence), but if you don't, then avoid incorporating "dangerous knowledge" as a second best alternative. Apply a low Bayes factor for something someone didn't choose, as long as you give them a chance to counteract it with other evidence.

(Poetry still sucks, though. I'm not yet changing my mind about that.)

Comment author: Emile 13 July 2010 05:27:14PM 10 points [-]

(Poetry still sucks, though. I'm not yet changing my mind about that.)

... must ... resist ... impulse ... to ... downvote ... different ... tastes ...

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 July 2010 10:51:42PM 0 points [-]

The other problem with "using all you know" about groups which are subject to bigotry is that "we rule, you drool" is very basic human wiring, and there's apt to be some motivated cognition (in the people developing and giving you the information, even if you aren't engaging in it) on the subject.