Some people feel curiosity less often and less intensely than others, just as some people feel angry less often -- why truth for the uncurious? Conversely it's possible to sate curiosity by studying and accepting lies and not truths. Ron Hubbard and Saint Augustine strike me as very curious folks.
I agree with this. The post annoyed me with how it treated curiosity as one of the main reason to seek truth, when there are so many better reasons, at least in the current era. My attitude toward curiosity is similar to the attitude that Eliezer expresses, for example, here toward intellectual competitivism. (See in particular the part where he says "I’m happy to accept my ignoble motivations as a legitimate part of myself, so long as they’re motivations to learn math".)
I can't dispute the instrumental value of a rational approach to building airplanes. But the instrumental value of a rational approach to religion is less clear to me.
Waste of time, money, and lives that could be devoted to useful things like science and rational charity. Could be justified by egoism if not for the potential for greatly prolonged lifespans/greatly improved lives from technology, but people aren't egoists and religion prevents people from learning about exactly those benefits that destroy even the egoistic reasons.
Today's post, Why truth? And... was originally published on 27 November 2006. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Martial Art of Rationality, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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