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Mycelia comments on Explain/Worship/Ignore? - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 September 2007 08:01PM

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Comment author: Mycelia 20 January 2010 10:27:50PM -3 points [-]

An explanation using myth is only "bad" from a rationalists' perspective. Devoid of "ism" it's as good as any... Maybe I only care about how condensation works far enough to make a painting of it, or write a song about it. As stated above, no one has the slightest idea what's going on... even if you can explain exactly how every phenomenon works and how it happens, tell me "why" it happens and I'll give you a virtua-lolipop. If I have a reality where I experience "ghosts" "god" "fairies" and "giant pyramid craft hovering over the kremlin" (hold on...) then I have a reality where those things happen to me. maybe evolutionary biology rules out fairies- that doesn't change the fact that they sometimes happen to people. If that experience can have meaning attached to it, in what sense is it not "real"? I mean, my dreams are "real". "reality" is very ambiguously defined.

Comment author: thomblake 20 January 2010 11:24:53PM 2 points [-]

An explanation using myth is only "bad" from a rationalists' perspective.

I'm willing to agree with you on this, but this is a community devoted to rationality. Please no basketball on the tennis court. Thus the downvotes.