LESSWRONG
LW

All of B.H.'s Comments + Replies

Rationality Quotes 3
B.H.10

Regarding the quote from J. K. Galbraith, all I can say is he was a major practitioner of exactly that point. I don't believe he ever ran a single statistical test in his life, I never heard him ever doubt his own beliefs, and I don't believe he ever changed his mind (or at least admitted to changing his mind) on a single point of economics. He tended to regard his own private observations has infalliable evidence. One could do a major study of bias just studying the work of Galbraith. Galbraith is a great example of how a large ego is the greatest barrier to seeking truth. The world needs more genius, but it needs more humility more.

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Fake Justification
B.H.00

I, too, enjoyed Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. But note that Tolkien was a devout Catholic who took the Bible very seriously. To announce that LOTR is superior to the Bible puts you in the same camp as the woman who, reading "Hamlet" for the first time in middle-age, stopped reading it halfway through because it was filled with cliches.

Try overcoming anti-religious bias.

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Human Evil and Muddled Thinking
B.H.31

I regret that I have to disagree with the post, even though I am a great fan of Orwell.

Stalin and Hitler did not suffer from lack of clarity. They knew exactly what they were doing, knew why they were doing it, and were glad of the outcome. More logic and better writing would simply have helped them be even more effectively evil. Teaching clear thinking is important; but it will not stop evil people from having evil intentions or acting evil. Evil emerges from the heart and soul, not the head. Intellectuals who supported, and support, Lenin, Stali... (read more)

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3buybuydandavis
I'm unconcerned with theorizing on the earnestness of Hitler and Stalin, because I don't think it matters. The power they had was lent to them by millions who were conceptually confused. Let me take Marx, who I've read more of. His materialist conception of history is riddled with the worst kind of idealistic piffle - the kind that mistakes itself for reality. On the more pragmatic, prescriptive side, how many believers in Marxism had a clear idea what the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would in fact be? I doubt many. There was just a fuzzy collective "We" that would be in charge, which left the simple minded to project their own values onto "We", and since their values were consistent with their values, the Dictatorship would be a wonderful thing. People committed to clarity of thought would have wanted to know how that Dictatorship of the Proletariat was going to work in reality, as opposed to a political slogan. "Let's empower some subset of primates to control the rest without limit." Yeah, that'll work out well.
5sam0345
Hitler had a plausible argument that doing dreadful things was urgent, right, and necessary. Stalin had a plausible argument that he was not doing evil things. The overwhelming majority of American intellectuals before 1956 believed that Stalin was saintly, superhuman, and distinctly godlike, and if they doubted, were careful not to express such doubts, therefore it is probable that Stalin plausibly believed himself at least somewhat saintly. Pol Pot clearly believed that he was a saint, and everyone who had personal contact with him, as a child or as an adult either believed in his saintliness, or believed that he suffered from delusions of saintliness. If it is so obvious that Stalin was consciously and intentionally evil, why is it that no respectable person in the US could express this view before 1946, and no respectable properly academic public intellectual could express this view before 1956?
1lessdazed
Having read dozens autobiographies, memoirs, and other primary sources (including translations, I don't read German, Russian, etc.), as well as many more secondary sources about the Second World War (and the Spanish Civil War, and the Winter War, etc.), I can only wonder as to what you might mean by "clarity", "logic", and the other terms you use and/or how you came to your conclusions, and what sources were the input you interpreted. This is misleading. Wikipedia. Good intentions do not stop people from acting evilly.
6DanielLC
I disagree. They managed to convince themselves that the people they were killing weren't really people. Helping people open their eyes means making them stop lying to themselves. People lying to themselves is one of the largest causes of bias. That is a very good example of why overcoming bias is important.
1Broggly
I do remember the stories of Mao's failed agricultural policies, and that he was generally either deceived or not made aware of this fact. Are you saying that he actively caused famines and poverty to test his control over China?
TobyBartels120

Stalin and Hitler did not suffer from lack of clarity. They knew exactly what they were doing

Yes, hypocrisy is not the problem with them.

Intellectuals who supported, and support, Lenin, […], and so forth, knew what they doing.

No, I don't think that they did or do! Orwell was writing to intellectuals who were in denial about what Stalin was doing and why. Here is where hypocrisy causes problems.

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