= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
HughRistik comments on Rationality quotes - May 2009 - 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 (98)
This is actually an anti-rationality quote. Enigmas of the world are not harmless. Just try fighting "harmless enigmas" like diseases before germ theory. The mysteries of the world are not made terrible by our attempts to interpret them as though it had an underlying truth.
I interpret this quote to suggest that mysteries are harmless, and that trying to understand the world is what is harmful. The vast majority of the time, this view is backwards; it is falsified by the history of science. I really hope this isn't what the quote means in context, because otherwise, it is mystery mongering, and I can't even begin to fathom what is wrong with the thought process that led to it.
What we don't know can hurt us. Attempting to understand the world based on an underlying structure is at least instrumentally rational, and it might even be true, also.
I'm curious about the context of the quote, and what NihilCredo thinks it has to do with rationality.
Larry Niven, "Flatlander" (1967)
In my view, Eco wasn't referring to things in the world like diseases, but rather the world itself. Trying to answer questions like "what is the meaning of life" or "why does anything exist rather than not exist" can drive you mad, and it's a pointless exercise. The takeaway: accept that life has no 'meaning' beyond what we give it, and move on.
Diseases are a part of the world. My point is that empirical mysteries are not harmless.
I agree with your view. Empirical mysteries are bad. Yet certain non-empirical mysteries such as questions of metaphysical meaning, or value judgment, are better left off as mysteries. Unlike empirical questions, there is no right answer. As many philosophers have argued, a lot of human suffering is based on assigning inappropriate meaning to things. Indeed, cognitive behavioral therapy, and self-help such as The Work of Byron Katie are based on destroying or suspending these meanings that people assign.
I hope this is what Eco means in context. But it's not what is literally said in this quote: the phrase "the whole world" sounds like it is also referring to empirical phenomena.
The novel is a satire on conspiracy theories. The entire book can be read as a polemic against the mind projection fallacy and confirmation bias.
Would it help to note that the book was something of a reductio of conspiracy theories?
Oh, so is it one of Eco's characters asserting this view? That would make more sense.
It is the narrator's final despair of rationality. He and his colleagues in a publishing house, having read many conspiracy theories, start inventing their own as an intellectual game. But it gets taken up by real conspiracy theorists; hijinks ensue.