pre comments on Belief in Self-Deception - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 March 2009 03:20PM

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Comment author: pre 05 March 2009 08:00:09PM *  2 points [-]

I would expect a reply along the lines of: It's precisely because I can't trust my own reasoning when deciding which false beliefs I should have that I accept these which are handed down. I pick Judaism because it's the oldest and thus has shown through memetic competition that it's the strongest set of false beliefs one could have.

Or ..." I pick Christianity because it's the most popular and has therefore proven itself memetically competitive."

I have a lot of friends who think "it's old therefore it must be good to have survived this long" about Tarot and eastern religions etc.

Personally I'd wanna eliminate the false beliefs even if it cost me my mojo, but that's a different set of priorities I guess.

Comment author: David_Gerard 22 February 2011 11:16:38AM -1 points [-]

I have a lot of friends who think "it's old therefore it must be good to have survived this long" about Tarot and eastern religions etc.

In fact, the argument from tradition is considered very strong in alternative medicine in particular and New Age culture in general, even if whatever it is was actually made up^W^Wrediscovered last week.