mitchell_porter2 comments on Something to Protect - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 January 2008 05:52PM

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Comment author: mitchell_porter2 02 February 2008 03:43:56AM 0 points [-]

Caledonian: Let's distinguish between the aesthetics of rationality and the pragmatics of rationality. Is my model of the world consistent, do my goals make sense - that's pragmatics. Aesthetics is by comparison nebulous and subtle, but perhaps it encompasses both admiration for the lawlike nature of reality and self-admiration for one's own relationship to it. :-)

It seems to me that you are taking issue with the idea that the pragmatics of rationality should be trumped by a higher cause. This essay says nothing about that. It says, first, that it's a psychological fact that people don't adopt rationality as a conscious value until some other, already existing value is threatened by irrationality, and second, that you won't keep developing as a rationalist without such pressure.

As for whether reason by itself can supply supreme values, I had to ask because so many people do think you can get an ought from an is. (I still don't know what you meant by "truth points to itself".)