Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Making History Available - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 August 2007 07:52PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 September 2007 05:03:26AM 8 points [-]

Repudiating your usual earnest rationality for flippancy in this comment seems uncharacteristic.

You realize you're saying this the same day I proposed that thievery should be punishable by spanking.

Despite the progress of empirical science, each new human starts at 0 and as they mature, they must decide what they are willing to accept.

Yes, but if you live in a society with a more mature science, which knows more because knowledge compounds, then you'll get a chance to accept more science. Especially if you happen to start out in the Traditional Rationality subculture. No matter how rationally minded you are in the 11th century, there won't be much sanity to absorb.

You can complain all you want about the glory and danger of individual choice, but this is still - even collectively, and even outside Rationalist subculture - the most ancient civilization the world has ever known, and the wisest.