"If I want to make a funny political cartoon, I have to put in some effort. Go beyond the cached thought. Use my creativity. Depict Bush as a tentacle monster and Science as a Japanese schoolgirl."
Yikes. This is scary because a tentacle monster and a Japanese schoolgirl would have been my first thought.
Hmmm. I used to be a Southern Baptist and since my turning to atheism I most certainly have lost much of my sense of morality. I'm far more of a moral relativist than I ever thought I could become and I find myself seldom convinced by anything that attempts to appeal to morals based on tradition. But by and large my actions in my day to day life have not changed one bit. God (and what my parents taught me) was my moral compass. Now that compass is gone and I have no moral navigation, but I'm still walking in the same direction I was before out of habit. I'm not sure how I feel about that at all. =/
woah. thanks for the links about the evolved wheels. that's pretty awesome stuff right there hah.
"According to biologists' best current knowledge, evolutions have invented a fully rotating wheel on a grand total of three occasions"
Eliezer, what do you mean by this? I think my brain is not working today or something cause this seems like it's either a joke (which I do not get) or a reference to something in biology (which I am not aware of).
Other than that bit of confusion, this was a fantastic post. I think the last few things you've written on evolution should be required reading in every biology class (especially high school ones). So many well intentioned people have a severe misunderstanding of evolution and what you've written I think can clear it up.
Daniel: Judging ancient works by modern standards is a Freshman Comp 101 mistake.
Only if you're trying to be fair. Isaac Newton was one of the great discoverers of the ages. He is no longer a good physicist. This is right and proper. All arts should move forward, and if they don't, something is wrong. If no one had ever done better than Shakespeare - as evaluated by a blinded judge who didn't know Shakespeare was supposed to be great - it would be cause for deep concern. Not all arts are like the art of science, but artists should still learn from each oth...
I can understand the reasoning behind the saying that death gives meaning to life. But I've never been able to fully agree with that sentiment. If I could I would live forever. Death certainly gives me reason to want to do as much as I can while I am still able. But that desire doesn't give my life any more meaning than if it was not there. I can agree that death makes life precious, for without death life would be abundant.
I often imagine what it'd be like to live 200 years or 1000 years. I know like Eliezer I would do so if able (assuming my mind was sti...
I had to look at the html source where you said "Try to say aloud the color - not the meaning, but the color - of the following letter-string: "GREEN"" because I'm colorblind and I couldn't tell what color it was. Small amounts of red or green appear to be BOTH red and green simultaneously haha (show me a giant field of green and I can tell it's green most of the time, but show me a dot of green on a field of white and I have no clue, same with red). I guess that really isn't relevant to anything said here, I just thought it was funny considering the point of the exercise.
Fantastic post Eliezer, many of your recent posts have been articulating thoughts that I've been mulling about in my head over the last year or so. This one especially since I had an argument with a friend on this very subject not even a week ago haha. When you get around to publishing all of this as a book I will definitely buy a copy for myself and for my friend.
Also, Jacob, I glanced at your blog and saw the post on human evolution, if that is any indication of the quality of proof you have for Orthodox Judaism I don't think I need to read any further.
Having worked on several large software projects I have experienced first hand overly optimistic goals. Just because you think you have a clue about what it is you're supposed to do doesn't mean that when you actually sit down and start working that you know even 1/10th what you need to know. For me personally that is the reason why the projects I've worked took longer than I (and everyone else involved) thought at first. I simply didn't know what I didn't know. It wasn't long before half my work days were spent simply reading and learning about what it was I was trying to do before I actually got around to doing it.
This is a pretty interesting discussion. While the overall topic of this blog is the worthwhileness of overcoming bias, I think how that relates to "evil" is a pretty important facet of what we should talk about. Some of the comments on this post reminded me of a passage from a novel (a fantasy novel if you must know) on the nature of evil. I found it to be very profound and I think everyone here might find it sort of interesting. You'll have to excuse the use of some of the plot specific names, the beginning of each chapter of the book opens wit...
Haha, that's a pretty good analogy. Unfortunately I think most people (myself in the past included and probably even still now) by default have their mouse cursor hovering over wherever the Ignore or Worship buttons appear when such a dialog shows up. And they click it in much the same way my grandparents would click a popup that installs malware on their computer, without thinking or paying attention. Clicking the Explain button requires effort (moving your cursor to a different spot and then waiting for an explanation), and knowing that it will bring up another dialog sooner or later makes it easier for people to just press Ignore or Worship.
I hope I'm not misunderstanding Hopefully Anonymous' question here, but it would seem to me that a society whose laws are based solely on rationally minimizing harm would have to be a society with little or no freedom. I guess it depends on what is defined as the maximum risk the society is willing to endure to the physical safety of the individuals (and I presume the structure of the society as a whole). I think Eliezer certainly hinted at what I feel the main problem would be with a society whose laws are made to counteract individual irrationality. In d...
I think Eliezer outed himself as an anime fan in this post. It's ok, I'm a pretty big one myself.