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djcb comments on Rationality Quotes September 2011 - Less Wrong
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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).