ChristianKl comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 02 January 2013 05:23PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 07 January 2013 05:52:50PM -1 points [-]

If you actually care about the influence on how you treat others, why don't use that as your test whether to hold a belief? Instead of focusing on whether the belief in likely to be true you could focus on whether it's likely to be harm other people.

A lot of Christian's don't believe in beheading people for mixed-sex dancing and victimizate homosexuals. For them the fact that other Christian's do those thing is no good reason to drop their beliefs.

Comment author: Toddling 15 January 2013 12:11:55AM 1 point [-]

If you actually care about the influence on how you treat others, why don't use that as your test whether to hold a belief? Instead of focusing on whether the belief in likely to be true you could focus on whether it's likely to be harm other people.

It can be difficult to know what will be harmful without knowing whether certain things are true.

Hypothetical example: A person kills their child in order to prevent them from committing some kind of sin and going to hell. If this person's beliefs about the existence of hell and how people get in and stay out of it are true, they have saved their child from a great deal of suffering. If their beliefs are not true, they have killed their child for nothing.