= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
komponisto comments on Rationality quotes: August 2010 - 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 (201)
Pardon the bluntness, but I noticed the "parodying the Nicene Creed" bit, saw it as a failed attempt to be clever by adapting religious recitations to a naturalist end, was unimpressed (not because of some general principle against such adaptation), and voted it down still, without seeing it as tree-hugging.
Very well; deleted accordingly.
(Pardon me, however, if I'm a bit skeptical about there not being a "general principle" involved here -- Odifreddi's "credo" may not be all that witty -- and perhaps that's partly my fault, since the above was my translation -- but it would still deserve a place in this thread, were it not for aversions to "imitating" religion, and to reverential or emotional-sounding language in general. After all, since when do rationality quotes have to be witty or clever?)
Okay, looking back, I think that's a fair point. I meant something more like: Modifying religious hymns/creeds to express a rationalist view looks cliche (or a more apt term I can't think of) to me, so I hold them to a higher standard. And anyone can do a word swapout. So, in a sense, there is a general principle involved that I believe cuts against that kind of quote.
Rationality quotes do have to be witty or clever in the sense that they have to do a bit more than just state a rationalist tenet. It wouldn't be appropriate to post a quote as simple as, "You should update your beliefs on evidence."
I didn't like the quote overall, but that's the part that I took exception to. Death is the enemy.
I think that line means the opposite of how you interpreted it. I read "I await the dissolution of death" not as "I await the dissolution that is death" but as "I await the point when the threat of death is dissolved".
Edit: What komponisto said.
I don't quite see how the subsequent clause would make sense under that reading.
If that "but" were an "and", I would agree with you.
What about interpreting it like this:
Yeah, this may just be a parse error on my part. Apologies for the noise.
"But" makes perfect sense to me: "I, too, hope to triumph over death, but not in the way that religious people do."
Well, if death is the enemy, all the more reason to await its dissolution!
(Seriously, that's how I parsed it the first time I read it.)