Phil_Goetz4 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 07:59:32PM 0 points [-]

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

It is easy to construct at least these 2 kinds of cases where this is false:

  • You have a set of beliefs optimized for co-occurence, and you are replacing one of these beliefs with a more-true belief. In other words, the new true belief will cause you harm because of other untrue (or less true) beliefs that you still hold.
  • If an entire community can be persuaded to adopt a false belief, it may enable them to overcome a tragedy-of-the-commons or prisoners'-dilemma situation.

If you still aren't convinced whether you are always better-off with a true belief, ask yourself whether you have ever told someone else something that was not quite true, or withheld a truth from them, because you thought the full truth would be harmful.