Rationality Quotes: November 2010

jaimeastorga2000

Rationality Quotes: November 2010 — LessWrong

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Your comment raises a very delicate point and I'm not sure that I am tactful enough to make it clearly.

Zooming out to get a broader view so that we can notice what usually happens, rather than the memorable special case, we notice that most Germans were enthusiastic about Hitler, all the way from 1933 to 1941. It is hard to reconstruct the reasons why. Looking at the broad picture we get a clear sense of people being their own worst enemies, enthusiastically embracing a mad leader who will lead them to destruction.

The message that history is sending to Alan is: if you had been a young man in Germany in 1933 you would have idolized Hitler. There are two ways to respond to this sobering message. One is to picture myself as an innocent victim. There were plenty of innocent victims, so this is easily done, but it dodges the hard question. The other response is to embrace the LessWrong vision and to search for ways to avoid the disasters to which self-deception sentences Man.

roland16y-10

The other response is to embrace the LessWrong vision and to search for ways to avoid the disasters to which self-deception sentences Man.

I'm a big fan of lesswrong yet I think it falls short because it lacks any concrete steps taken in the direction of being more rational. Just reading interesting posts won't make you a rationalist.

12sketerpot16y

You're right, and I think that the reason it's so hard to make that point tactfully is because of how scary it is. If we go down that line of thought honestly, we can imagine ourselves firing up the ovens, or dragging manacled people into the belly of a slave ship, and feeling good about it. This is not a comfortable idea. But there's another, more hopeful side to this. As MartinB points out, it's possible to understand how such monstrous acts feel to the people committing them, and train yourself to avoid making the same mistakes. This is a problem we can actually attack, as long as we can accept that our own thoughts are fallible. (On a lighter note: how many people here regularly catch themselves using fallacious logic, and quickly correct their own thoughts? I would hope that the answer is "everyone", or at least "almost everyone". If you do this, then it shows that you're already being significantly less wrong, and it should give a fair amount of protection against crazy murderous ideologies.)

3MartinB16y

I doubt that it is. You find similar idolizations of leaders in many places. The general principles can be understood, and I think are by now. For the special case of nazi-germany you have the added bonus of good documentation and easy availability of contemporary sources.

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