Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Could you clarify what your point is and why you're making it?

Although C S Lewis opposed X on the grounds that it's tyrannical, he himself would have been tyrannical given the chance

Yes. He believes that arbitrary things are bad. Belief that arbitrary things are bad would lead to tyranny unless we get very lucky and he happens, by chance, not to think any of them are bad enough to ban. Of course, he wouldn't think of it as tyranny, he'd think of it as "not allowing people the freedom to hurt others" or some such.

Almost everyone has some things they would prefer to be illegal

But religion has a habit of tossing weird things into the mix that nobody would ever believe otherwise. Do you honestly think that many people would believe that killing a zygote is murder without the influence of religion? Or believe in 7 literal day creation? People whose religion is similar to Lewis believe those things, and it's pure chance that Lewis's branch doesn't (at least for creation, Lewis didn't say much about abortion).

Do you honestly think that many people would believe that killing a zygote is murder without the influence of religion?

Would anyone believe that killing a newly born baby is murder without the influence of religion?

1entirelyuseless11y

I think many people would believe that abortion is murder without being religious. That is not now the case about the seven day literal creation, but it was either the case in the past, or the account in the book of Genesis was not believed by the author, or not intended literally, since it was written one way or the other. But in any case, again, Lewis adopted his religion as an adult and might not have adopted it if it had contained arbitary content such as "eating mushrooms is a grave sin that will be punished by a worse hell than anything else." So even if we falsely assume that the content of all religions is completely arbitrary in itself, the content of his religion would not be, since he chose it.

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Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

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Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

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