wallowinmaya comments on Crisis of Faith - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2008 10:08PM

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Comment author: Phil_Goetz4 11 October 2008 05:48:03PM 3 points [-]

Eliezer:

If a belief is true you will be better off believing it, and if it is false you will be better off rejecting it.

I think you should try applying your own advice to this belief of yours. It is usually true, but it is certainly not always true, and reeks of irrational bias.

My experience with my crisis of faith seems quite opposite to your conceptions. I was raised in a fundamentalist family, and I had to "make an extraordinary effort" to keep believing in Christianity from the time I was 4 and started reading through the Bible, and finding things that were wrong; to the time I finally "came out" as a non-Christian around the age of 20. I finally gave up being Christian only when I was worn out and tired of putting forth such an extraordinary effort.

So in some cases your advice might do more harm than good. A person who is committed to making "extraordinary efforts" concerning their beliefs is more likely to find justifications to continue to hold onto their belief, than is someone who is lazier, and just accepts overwhelming evidence instead of letting it kick them into an "extraordinary effort." In other words, you are advocating a combative, Western approach; I am bringing up a more Eastern approach, which is not to be so attached to anything in the first place, but to bend if the wind blows hard enough.

Comment author: wallowinmaya 17 May 2011 07:21:02PM 6 points [-]

From "Twelve virtues of rationality" by Eliezer:

The third virtue is lightness. Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can. Do this the instant you realize what you are resisting; the instant you can see from which quarter the winds of evidence are blowing against you.

Eliezer uses almost the same words as you do.( Oh, and this document is from 2006, so he has not copied your lines.) Some posts earlier Eliezer accused you of not reading his writings and just making stuff up regarding his viewpoints.......