brianm comments on Tolerate Tolerance - Less Wrong

48 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 March 2009 07:34AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (88)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: brianm 21 March 2009 12:07:48PM 5 points [-]

I think there are other examples with just as much agreement on their wrongness, many of which have a much lower degree of investment even for their believers. Astrology for instance has many believers, but they tend to be fairly weak beliefs, and don't produce such a defensive reaction when criticized. Lots of other superstitions also exist, so sadly I don't think we'll run out of examples any time soon.

Comment author: ciphergoth 21 March 2009 01:31:40PM 8 points [-]

But because people aren't so invested in it, they mostly won't work so hard to rationalise it; mostly people who are really trying to be rational will simply drop it, and you're left with a fairly flabby opposition. Whereas lots of smart people who really wanted to be clear-thinking have fought to hang onto religion, and built huge castles of error to defend it.