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JoshuaZ comments on Rationality Quotes September 2011 - Less Wrong
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Sorry, I don't understand what this quote is trying to say. I've attempted to parse it and can sort get some sort of thing about not caring what the truth is. If that's the meaning then it seems to be pretty anti-rationalist. What am I missing?
The marvelous irony of Joseph Campbell is that he was a world-renowned mythologist and expert on religion... but basically an atheist materialist. I interpret the quote as saying: "As our ways of knowing grow more accurate, we are more likely to produce undeniable truths that benefit all human beings."
More from the same introduction:
I found Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces not very convincing. The similarities he sees between folk stories are often rather trivial, I think, and the rubbery nature of human language makes it easy -- not even mentioning selection bias.
Is The Power of Myth better?
Probably valid. What's an example of a non-trivial similarity in folk stories?
My knowledge of Campbell's work is limited to my having watched Moyers' interviews with him:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
I wonder what he would think of the possibility of "editing" human nature via technology, and how those changes might negate the usefulness of mythology as a set of teaching memes.
Greg Egan's short story "The Planck Dive" has an interesting take on that subject. It's about a mythologist trying to force a description of a post-Singularity scientific expedition into one of the classic mythical narratives.
It's not "post-Singularity", it's normal human technology, just more advanced.
I guess you could say that. I said "post-Singularity" because all the characters are uploads, but there aren't any AGIs and human nature isn't unrecognizably different.
An example of a well-known non-trivial similarity would be the flood-myths that many cultures have -- it seems that least some of those myths are related somehow - but not in inherited psycho-analytical way (!) that Campbell suspects, but more likely simply due to copying the stories (e.g. Noah, Gilgamesh).