NancyLebovitz comments on A sense of logic - Less Wrong

13 Post author: NancyLebovitz 10 December 2010 06:19PM

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Comment author: ugquestions 11 December 2010 01:11:47PM 2 points [-]

"All men are created equal"

"God's love is unconditional"

I feel the pain in my head. I think its because I genuinely want to understand why they truly believe what they are saying while not seeing the clear contradictions, but try as I might I just cannot. I have found that I feel the same way when a contradiction betweeen a belief and action within myself occurs. For example I believe nothing really matters, but every decision and action I take obviously contradicts this belief.

The pain has a name. Confusion. With awareness that such ideas impact the world and yourself it combines with sadness, pity, anger, frustration or a combination of all of them. Maybe this is the pain you feel in the stomach. Zen uses koans to take confusion to a heighten level in order to show an individual that all thought is equally confused depending on your perspective. The truth is there is nothing solid or certain just a feeling (that is created/invented) that there is. Belief, thought, action, feeling have little to do with reality. People have a limitless ability to rationalize just about anything and make the most absurd ideas true for themselves. The corners you feel are all pinned down are coners you or people collectively have created for yourself. Different corners, different conclusions, different logic. How you react to ideas, whether fast or not, is based upon the corners your logic uses (and so is in a sense kinethetic) and how they are set up over a lifetime is as individual as fingerprints.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 11 December 2010 01:32:25PM 4 points [-]

I think the first one is politically useful if it's interpreted as something like "no one is automatically dispensable".

Comment author: ugquestions 11 December 2010 01:35:26PM 0 points [-]

"Interpretation" creates/is rationality or logic.

Comment author: shokwave 11 December 2010 05:08:50PM 0 points [-]

How does that square with interpretations being right or wrong? Is that not possible?

Comment author: ugquestions 12 December 2010 03:06:15AM 0 points [-]

Questions of right and wrong are an entirely different arguement. In this case it is not a question of the idea being right or wrong. Its the beleif in the idea while ommiting the obvious flaws. I wouldn't try to argue that anyone writing on this site would use this idea in this way.

What do you think of "gods love is unconditional". No-one seems to have commented on this.

Comment author: shokwave 12 December 2010 04:31:02AM 7 points [-]

I think "god's love is unconditional" is wrong in exactly the same way, but LessWrong doesn't have as many theists as it does Americans.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 December 2010 04:56:05AM 6 points [-]

LessWrong doesn't have as many theists as it does Americans.

I found that hysterical for some reason.

Comment author: ugquestions 13 December 2010 03:21:42AM 1 point [-]

I giggled quite a bit at that statement too.