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

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

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

Comments (311)

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

Comment author: WrongBot 13 July 2010 03:03:20PM *  6 points [-]

I am grouping together "everything that goes into your brain," which includes lots and lots of stuff, most of it unconscious. See research on priming, for example.

This argument is explicitly about encouraging people to justify ignoring relevant data about reality. It is, I recognize, an extremely dangerous proposition, of exactly the sort I am warning against!

At risk of making a fully general counterargument, I think it's telling that a number of commenters, yourself included, have all but said that this post is too dangerous.

  • You called it "deeply worrisome."
  • RichardKennaway called it "defeatist scaremongering."
  • Emile thinks it's Dark Side Epistemology. (And see my response.)

These are not just people dismissing this as a bad idea (which would have encouraged me to do the same), these are people are worrying about a dangerous idea. I'm more convinced I'm right than I was when I wrote the post.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 13 July 2010 03:19:38PM 6 points [-]

Heh. So most of the critics argue their disapproval of the argument in your post based essentially on the same considerations as discussed in the post.