"P. C. Hodgell said: "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." "
That sounds very much like a quote from a Russian anarchist which was I think mentioned in one of Turgenev's books, possibly "Fathers and Sons". Here we go:
"Anything that can be broken, should be broken." ~Dmitri Pisarev
Solomon says: nothing new under the sun.
Isn't "by the truth" an extremely important qualifier?! I'm really curious how the two quotes are the same.
It seems to me that the basic irrationality implicated here is the assumption that there is such a thing as rationality.
Alright, I just wanted to put that in a clever contenentalist sounding quip but didn't quite manage. What I mean is this: It (usually) makes sense to talk about beliefs being true or false. We can even talk about tendencies as being more or less inclined to reach true beliefs (given background assumptions about the distributions of such truths). However, implicit in this post and many of the comments that follow is the idea that rationality is some kind of discipline that can be followed and applied.
Or to put the point differently I think many people here are making the implicit assumption that there is some objectively correct way to evaluate evidence (over and above the constraint of simple logical consistency). However, it's an entirely contingent fact that the sorts of rules we use to predict events in the world around us (scientific induction) actually succeed instead of a world where counter-induction holds (the more times a simple seeming pattern has occurred in the past the less chance it will occur in the future).
Worse, even if you believe that there are some magic objective facts about what the 'right' epistemic responses are to evidence at best rationality is a term that can be applied to a particular description, not to a person or a person's actions. To see why note that I can always describe the same actions by an infinite number of possible rules. For instance suppose my friend asks his computer to spit out a random claim about number theory and decides to put total faith in it's truth despite a widely accepted supposed proof of the converse. Sounds super irrational but yet the same behavior is also equally well described as saying my friend was following the rule of believing claim X about number theory with probability 1 upon first consideration. Since claim X is in fact a theorem that rule is perfectly rational.
Correct me if I read it wrong, but did you just say that induction doesn't work? I admit I don't know how to even begin arguing for induction, so you've got a great opportunity; give an actual argument, rather than just saying we live in "a world where counter-induction holds."
Also, while any phenomenon can be described by an infinite number of math equations, the more complicated ones are less likely to be true. See also, Occam's Razor. Obviously, this relies on probability theory, which was formulated by induction, but you did say "even if you believe that there are some magic objective facts" which I assumed to be induction, probability theory, etc.
There should be an emotional display of how many upvotes a post got.
Numbers are, well, too numbery for that.
Either a smile with ever growing smile.
or a ballon that grows bigger and bigger (for posts that really get way too upvoted, the ballon could explode into colorfull bright carnival paper, or candy, or Brad Pitt, or Russian Redheads...)
Ok, ballon or smile, who is with me?
I like the idea, but they seem kind of gimmicky. (thinking of LW's comments section, it would be hard to give another icon the kind of prominence we want, without making it too big). How about a green/red bar, like the one on YouTube?
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I'd phrase it as, rationality prevents you from experiencing irrational (i.e., pointless) emotions.
My theory is that almost all negative emotions have to be learned by imitation. They are cached responses copied from role models at an early age, almost always irrational (read: counterproductive), and unfortunately there is no automatic updating system for them.
Even worse is that whenever we experience a cached negative emotion our thinking is impaired (especially by anger), so there is even less chance that we'll notice and update it. Still worse is that even if we notice the response is irrational and try to update, once the sour taste of the emotion has infected the mind a clean update becomes extraordinarily difficult.
My solution: Make it a habit to imagine awful or offensive situations in advance, and see yourself reacting perfectly.
Like imagine you get stuck in traffic when you're in a hurry, but you're totally zen about it. Since it's your imagination you may as well be 100% chill, heck why not even find some reason to be happy about it? Then that will be the cached response next time you hit traffic.
Or say someone's kid spills grape juice on your new white carpet (and realistically you're not going to ask for remuneration). May as well imagine yourself reacting wonderfully, without missing a beat, no hint of irritation whatsoever. This kind of thing really impresses people.
Starts out right; being pointlessly angry at all those crazy drivers is a waste of energy, and often the result of various fallacies (fundamental fallacy? if you drove like that, you'd have a reason to).
But then you mention "why not even find some reason to be happy about it?" That's a bias; cut it out. Also, you want the kid to realize that spitting juice onto the carpet is unacceptable.