From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Sun Jul 15 2001 - 18:28:29 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> > worries me when you talk about truth being less important, about requiring
> > deep trust, and concluding that your personal path is beneficial to the
> > world. I fear that your unconscious may be telling you comforting lies.
>
> It depends very much on what you mean by "truth". There are
> truths that are really amenable to reason, logic and the
> scientific method. Truths about the material universe. There
> are other truths about people and consciousness and lifes and
> visions of what can be that are not so easy to touch with those
> tools but they are crucially important also. ...
You're talking to a social scientist who also feels very comfortable
talking physics or moral philosophy - to me it is all one whole with
similar tools throughout.
> What was said about trusting the messages from the deep self, or
> at any rate from beyond the range of the self-aware, conscious
> intellectual mind is both very true and very difficult to learn
> and to apply gracefully and in balance with the intellect.
I suppose then it is difficult for you to explain to us why we
should believe this?
> > Believing that what is good for me is good for the world is exactly one
> > of those areas where we should expect people to be self-deceived.
>
> Don't all of us here do precisely that? We all believe that
> augmenting ourselves and running technology all out to reach the
> Singularity is good for us and for the world. We believe it
> regardless of what most of the world has to say.
If we just believe it without consideration, because it feels so
natural to believe it, then yes, we are likely self-deceived.
We may happen to be right, but that is no excuse for excess
confidence.
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