TheOtherDave comments on Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 October 2007 01:59AM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 06 February 2013 07:26:00PM 0 points [-]

Implicit in your answer I think is the idea that there is a "best" approach that must be discovered among the various theories on living life

No, I don't think that's implied. We do make decisions, and some processes for making decisions lead to different results than other processes, and some results are better than others. It doesn't follow that there's a single best approach, or that such an approach is discoverable, or that it's worthwhile to search for it.

The goal is to "understand reality,"

Is that the goal? I'm not sure it is.

I think you must also believe that the idea of having a set theory to guide life, notwithstanding its flaws, is the best way to go about understanding reality.

As above, I neither agree that understanding reality is a singularly important terminal goal, nor that finding the "best theory" for achieving my goals is a particularly high-priority instrumental goal.

So, mostly, I feel like this entire comment is orthogonal to anything I actually said, and you're putting a lot of words in my mouth here. You might do better to just articulate what you believe without trying to frame it as a reply to my comment.