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Dr_Manhattan comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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Comments (354)
This post seems too vague to be useful.
I just got done re-reading Stephen Pinker's book How the Mind Works and seeing the phrase "largely circumstantial" in this post reminded me of Pinker's discussion of the so-called "nature-nurture issue." He points out that it's absurd to think that because nature is important, nurture doesn't matter, but he compares the statement "nature and nurture are both important" to statements like, "The behavior of a computer comes from from a complex interaction between the processor and the input," which is "true but useless."
I feel the same way about statements like "more is possible." I understand the desire to be inspirational, but my brain is objecting too much. How much more is possible? Under what circumstances? etc.
Inspiration would be wothless anyway if it was useless (other than making yourself feel good I guess)
Try and find out!
The way I understood this is that people are overly pessimistic and do not attempt things within their reach. (I might have been a somewhat specific message to the "rationalist" crowd since we tend to overthink, be skeptical and highly risk averse).