It's easy to think that rationality and seeking truth is an intellectual exercise, but this ignores the lessons of history. Cognitive biases and muddled thinking allow people to hide from their own mistakes and allow evil to take root. Spreading the truth makes a real difference in defeating evil.
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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 Rationality and the English Language, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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Today's post, Human Evil and Muddled Thinking was originally published on 13 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
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 Rationality and the English Language, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.