CCC comments on Rationality Quotes March 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: malcolmocean 01 March 2014 03:34PM

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Comment author: Jiro 07 March 2014 09:53:24AM *  0 points [-]

I read that quote as saying that the Devil (or a demon) deceives people by making them believe those things, not that the Devil believes these things himself. That's how demons behave, they lie to people. This one lies to people about why one should be a materialist and the people fall for it. The point is not to mock the demon, who in the quote is acting as a liar rather than a materialist, but to mock materialists themselves by implying that they are materialists for spurious reasons.

Of course, Lewis has plausible deniability. One can always claim he's not attributing anything to materialists in general--you're supposed to infer that; it's not actually stated.

Edit: Also, remember when Lewis wrote that. 1942 wasn't like today, when it's possible to say you don't believe in the supernatural and (if you live in the right area) not suffer too many consequences except not ever being able to run for political office. Any materialist at the time who claimed he was courageous could easily be just responding to persecution, not claiming that that was his reason for being a materialist. Mocking materialists for that would be like mocking gay pride parades today on the grounds that pride is a sin and a form of arrogance--pride in a vacuum is, but pride in response to someone telling you you're shameful isn't.

Comment author: CCC 07 March 2014 10:40:21AM 18 points [-]

The demon is not just lying at random - the demon is lying with the purpose of getting a certain reaction (in this case, getting the human to subscribe to the philosophy of materialism). The original quote is advice on how to use the human's cognitive biases against him, in order to better achieve that goal.

The point of the quote isn't materialism. That could be replaced with any other philosophy, quite easily. The point of the quote is that, for many people, subscribing to a philosophy isn't about whether that philosophy is true at all; it's more about whether that philosophy is popular, or cool, or daring.

The point isn't to mock the demon, or the materialist. The point is to highlight a common human cognitive mistake.