From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Sep 27 2001 - 13:17:11 MDT
John Clark wrote:
>
> Usamah Bin Laden is not a fraud either, I think he believes in every word he says, and
> I'm certain he's not in it for the money. Sincerity is a vastly overrated virtue. If a person
> does the right thing for the wrong reason it's still the right thing, and if somebody does
> an evil thing for a sincere reason it's still an evil thing.
I disagree. You have to do the right thing for the right reasons. Doing
the right thing for the wrong reasons is very dangerous and is bound to go
wrong sooner or later. The idea that it's okay to convince someone of a
true conclusion using an invalid argument is the excuse used by
propagandists from environmentalists to rabbis whenever they have to remix
the facts a little (or a lot) in support of their arguments.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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