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Notes -
One of the common points of contention between Rationalists and Evangelicals back in the LiveJournal and LessWrong days was the claim that an Atheist could not be a moral person. I have found that as I have gotten older I have become more sympathetic towards that argument not in the sense that I think a belief in God makes someone a good person but in the sense that I have come to recognize that being a moral person is incompatible with being a reasonable person. At it it's most basic level what is a moral conviction if not a pre-commitment to be unreasonable.
A large chunk of morals can be rationally justified along the lines of 'Whilst I may make an immediate advantage from doing X, repeated iterations of this same game-state where everybody does X creates a prisoner's dilemma' which doesn't then require an 'irrational' approach to extend towards things like the Golden Rule.
On the other hand, this also means that the post-religious West as-is struggles to deal with people who are just happy to hammer the defect button as there's no real spiritual authority to push along hard consequences and you're relying somewhat on everybody deciding to contribute to the greater project of society.
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If you believe in God, then being morally scrupulous is much more reasonable, I think.
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A positive term in your value function. Rationalism is about achieving your terminal goals, not about choosing them. There is nothing "irrational" about acting optimally to, say, purge all idolatry.
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