NancyLebovitz comments on Firewalling the Optimal from the Rational - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (339)
Coming from a hard-core Objectivist, the Objectivist community is unfortunately rife with all sorts of so-called "schisms". I think this is intrinsic in any community of thinkers who are focused on objectivity/optimality/rationality/etc in general, because inevitably people will feel differently on a given issue, and then everyone goes around blaming the other group that they aren't really objective or rational or optimal, etc.
This leads to me having to qualify a statement about some issue X with something like this:
Now it should be said of course that one group is actually right - but schisms are very unhealthy for any community, or any social group in general. The success of a social group per se is based very much on all-inclusiveness. That being said, identifying optimal, mainstream positions of a given philosophy is absolutely good for the philosophy per se.
So I would add something like: "firewall optimal philosophy from optimal community"
I think you're more likely to get schisms if you generally don't trust people to be willing and able to learn.