Liosis comments on So You've Changed Your Mind - Less Wrong

60 Post author: Spurlock 28 April 2011 07:42PM

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Comment author: Liosis 30 April 2011 06:40:40PM 3 points [-]

First, I think you do very well in capturing that sort of giddy excitement in having a belief undermined and the world turned upside down. I find it a rather addictive experience.

"It will touch each and every idea, and change it, and move on."

Not necessarily.

Sometimes I am having a conversation and I say something like 'we should stop dumping garbage.' There are ways that I can believe this validly. I could mean that we should start a better recycling program. We should change the sort of consumer goods are available. We should make people more conscious of what sort of place they are creating. But I don't know any of these arguments because this belief comes from the time before I learned to analyse and challenge beliefs, before I learned that I could fight back if a belief is challenged. Before I learned that I can see my belief in even the material world temporarily vanish without breaking. (It came back, which is nice because I like the material world.)

So there are residual beliefs, unless you systematically change all your beliefs at once only some will be changed. It is possible to have obsolete beliefs, which is really weird.

Comment author: Cayenne 30 April 2011 11:37:37PM *  0 points [-]

Sometimes I am having a conversation and I say something like 'we should stop dumping garbage.'

It seems to me that this is a misstated desire, 'I would like to see less garbage being dumped (by everyone)'.

Edit - please disregard this post