Hello. I come from HPMoR. I identify as Christian, though my belief and reasons for belief are a bit more complex than that. I'll probably do a post on that later in 'how to convince me 2+2=3'. I also get told that I over think things.

Anyway, that's not the reason I joined. I was reading an article by Eliezer Yudkowsky and he stated that whatever can be destroyed by truth should be. This got me wondering in what context that was meant. My first thought was that it meant that we should strive to destroy all false beliefs, which has the side effect of not lying, but then I began to wonder if it wasn`t more personal. We should strive to let the truth that we observe destroy any beliefs that they are able to.

I realized that the difference between the two is that one is an end in and of itself (destroy all false belief), and one is a means to achieve a goal more effectively (don`t hold on to false belief when it has been proved false). I am really not sure how I feel about the first one, it seems very confrontational to no good purpose. There are a lot of false beliefs out there that people hold dear. However the second one is strange as well.

One of peoples goals is to be happy. Now there is an old saying that ignorance is bliss. While this is definitely not always a good policy I can think of several cases off the top of my head were a person would be happier with a false belief than with reality. For example what if everything that is happening to you right now is your mind constructing an elaborate fantasy to stop you from realizing that you are slowly being tortured to death? If you break free of said belief you are not happy, and you can do nothing to save yourself. The goal of being happy is actively opposed by the goal of learning the truth. [disclaimer: I've read about the mind constructing such fantasies in books and have experienced it only once in my life to a limited degree when I was being beaten up as a child. I don't know how scientifically accurate they are. This is just an example and if necessary I can come up with another one.]

So probably that wasn't what Mr. Yudkowsky meant when he said that what can be destroyed by truth should be (and if it is, can someone explain to me why?). So what does it mean? I've run out of theories here.