DanielLC comments on According to Dale Carnegie, You Can't Win an Argument—and He Has a Point - LessWrong

61 Post author: ChrisHallquist 30 November 2013 06:23AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (77)

Comments (77)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: DanielLC 02 December 2013 12:14:00AM 1 point [-]

I listen to all these complaints about rudeness and intemperateness, and the opinion that I come to is that there is no polite way of asking somebody: have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion?

How about "Do you ever wonder if your entire life has been devoted to a delusion? It's a frightening possibility, and most horrifying of all, no matter what actually ends up being true, you have to agree that most people do this."

Admittedly, I suspect a lot of people would completely miss the point and tell you about that Christ will give you the certainty you look for. Or at least think it's something that only applies to other people.

Speaking of which, it's not something that only applies to other people. If you guys aren't worried, you should be.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 02 December 2013 12:52:16AM 0 points [-]

If you guys aren't worried, you should be.

Why?
I'm not asking whether my entire life might have been devoted to a delusion... of course it might have been.
I'm asking why I should be worried about it.

Comment author: DanielLC 02 December 2013 02:46:43AM *  0 points [-]

I suppose I made an unfounded assumption here. Do you have something to protect? If not, I guess it doesn't really matter, although in that case your life can't really be said to be devoted to anything at all, so clearly it wasn't devoted to an illusion. If so, then you simply cannot afford to be wrong.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 02 December 2013 03:50:30AM 1 point [-]

Let's say I'm fiercely devoted to protecting X, to which my life is devoted.

If you were suggesting that I ought to be carefully attending to things related to X and carefully deriving beliefs from those observations, I would agree with you.

But no matter how assiduously I do that, a non-zero possibility will always exist that I am deluded about X.

So I ask again: why should I worry about that possibility?

Comment author: DanielLC 02 December 2013 05:54:23AM 0 points [-]

Given that you are deluded, if you try to figure out how you might be deluded, you are more likely to end, or at least decrease, the delusion than if you do not. Ending the delusion will help you protect X.

The possibility isn't just non-zero. It's significant. From an outside view, you probably are deluded.

Should a Christian worry about being deluded? How, from the inside, could you tell yourself apart from them?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 02 December 2013 03:30:03PM *  0 points [-]

if you try to figure out how you might be deluded, you are more likely to end, or at least decrease, the delusion than if you do not.

Yes, I agree.

How, from the inside, could you tell yourself apart from them?

By carefully attending to things related to whatever it is that is like Christianity to me in this example, and carefully deriving my beliefs from those observations.

If I saw a Christian who was doing that, I would not encourage them to worry about being deluded; I would encourage them to keep doing what they're doing. And if I saw a Christian who was worried about being deluded but not attending to their environment, I would encourage them to worry less and pay more attention.

And the same goes for a non-Christian.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit