= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Bugmaster comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1430)
In the aggregate of all possible worlds, I expect it will let me lead a happier and more fulfilling life. This isn't to say that there aren't situations where it will disadvantage me to be a rationalist (a killer locks me and one other person in a room with a logic puzzle. He will kill the one who completes the puzzle first...) but in general, I think it will be an advantage. Its like in the game of poker, sometimes, the correct play will result in losing. That is okay though, if players play enough hands eventually superior skill will tell and the better player will come out on top. Being a superior rationalist may not always be best in every situation, but when the other choice (inferior rationalist) is worse in even more situations... the choice seems obvious.
Then I could stop walking, conserve my energy and try to suppress the blood loss. Or, I could activate my rationalist powers earlier and store a first aid kit in my car, or a fully charged cell phone in my pocket, or not venture out into the dangerous wild by myself...
I'll freely admit to a hostile stance on religion, but I think it is a deserved one. Whatever misconceptions I may have about Christianity are gained from growing up with a religious family and attending services "religiously" for the first two decades of my life. I have more than a passing familiarity with it. I don't think anything I said about religion is wrong though. Religious instruction is targeted predominantly towards children. The claims of the religious are false. Threatening a child with eternal damnation is bad. A consequence of being a Christian is giving 10% of your money to the church. Am I missing anything here?
If you knew this to be the case, the rational thing to do would be to avoid solving the puzzle :-)
Religious people would disagree with you here, I'd imagine.
This is another minor nitpick, but AFAIK not all Christian sects demand tithing (though some do).
Agreed, but there is at least one possible scenario (where I don't know it is the case) where it would hurt me to be a superior rationalist.
I imagine they would. Because they would disagree with me, I'd like for my beliefs to challenge theirs to trial by combat. That way, the wrong beliefs might be destroyed by the truth.
Sure, 10% is not true of all Christian groups. To my knowledge though, all such groups run on donations from the faithful. If the number isn't 10% it is still greater than zero. Arguments here are over scale and not moral righteousness.
I'm not so sure.
I mean, it's not like all religious people agree about religious claims, any more than all political activists agree about political claims, or all sports fans agree about claims regarding sports teams.
In fact, quite the contrary... I suspect that most religious people believe that the religious claims of most religious people are false.
Fair enough, though religious people would surely disagree with the statement, "All religious claims are false" -- which is what I interpreted electricfistula's comment to mean.
Yah.
Tangentially, I know a couple of Catholic seminarians who would disagree with "Most religious claims are false" -- they argue that claims which contradict certain tenets of Catholicism aren't religious claims at all, though the people making them may falsely believe them to be.