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TimS comments on How to Not Lose an Argument - Less Wrong
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Learning about rhetoric helps you understand human thinking. Using rhetoric is a way to cause another person to believe X, whether or not X is true.
The fact that people act as if they believe (and even actually believe) religion for social reasons is true. But acting as if you believe something is true when you don't makes it harder to achieve your goals. And supporting religion only because it supports your other beliefs is a waste of your resources.
I don't think this is responsive to my third point. But maybe I just don't understand.
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You are correct that rhetoric can be misused. It should be complemented by facts. My point is that just because rhetoric can be used to convince people of falsehoods does not prove that truth is not equally dependent on rhetoric to become normative in people's minds.
People are not born judging information by its verisimilitude. Empirical fact as a criteria for knowledge must be taught. I am not saying it is a bad thing to teach people (it is really good), what I am saying is that judging information by fact has to be seen as highly technical knowledge, not a fundamental system of cognition. The majority of the world's population does not judge information by fact. I am not even convinced that all scientists or rationalists truly judge information by fact.
My perception of you is that you see religion as an antiquated method for producing knowledge. I agree with you. I do not think religion should be the criteria of determining facts. Where we do not see eye to eye is that I also believe that religion serves several other functions beyond literal interpretation of the world. One of which is the maintenance and strengthening of social bonds. So I cannot as easily deem non-factual beliefs as a waste of resources (see my comment here http://lesswrong.com/lw/bk/the_trouble_with_good/ for more on this).
My response was meant to question your statement " I think it is still worth it to learn the truth."
At the pinnacle of your values is Truth. Can you explain to my why Truth should be regarded more important than social relationships/ personal health.
Truth is an instrumental value, not a terminal value of mine. Believing true things helps me achieve my actual goals.
Yes, and a major goal of LessWrong is to help people avoid cognitive bias and therefore do better at achieving their goals.