byrnema comments on Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy - Less Wrong
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I had a similar impression and response. Humanity seems to get in trouble when they try to make their values too explicitly consistent. The examples that come immediately to mind are when individuals or groups decide to become too strict, black and white or exacting about upholding a value that they have. They forget about or deny a larger context for that value.
I think that to avoid this, a person needs to learn to be comfortable with some inconsistency in their values. Even as they learn not to be comfortable with inconsistencies in their beliefs about reality. Our values don't represent truths about reality in the same way our beliefs about external reality do, and this seems to be a deeper source of the epistemological conflicts we have.