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VoiceOfRa comments on If you could push a button to eliminate one cognitive bias, which would you choose? - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: malcolmocean 09 April 2015 07:05AM

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Comment author: VoiceOfRa 14 April 2015 05:10:29AM 2 points [-]

What about someone raised in a bizarre alternate universe where tradition, culture and religious belief dictate that those who go faster than 30km/h while sober or in bindings have their souls eaten by demons, so everyone has to drive blind drunk without a seatbelt?

How could such a world possibly exist for more then a couple of years without people noticing that there is a problem?

Comment author: RowanE 14 April 2015 01:43:06PM 0 points [-]

I'm quite confident it wouldn't, hence "bizarre", but I don't think that matters to the questions I'm actually trying to address with the hypothetical. I just used a drunk driver because that's what DeVliegendeHollander used.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 16 April 2015 03:10:25AM 2 points [-]

The point is that traditions, especially long established traditions, generally do in fact contain good advice.

Comment author: Lumifer 16 April 2015 05:28:42PM 4 points [-]

The point is that traditions, especially long established traditions, generally do in fact contain good advice.

I think the point is weaker: long established traditions do not contain self-destructive advice and contain good advice for the times in which they were created. If the circumstances have changed sufficiently, the advice of ancient traditions could, in fact, be bad.

Comment author: RowanE 17 April 2015 08:57:01AM 0 points [-]

That tendency exists, and is part of why I'm confident the thing I described as a bizarre alternate universe wouldn't really happen, but it seems as true-but-irrelevant as the simple fact that such a tradition probably wouldn't develop.