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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29944 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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Of course that does not, as you imply, mean going around like some autistic robot spouting random true-but-horrible facts at random children.

But why not? If truth is indeed a higher value than comfort, or equanimity, or peace of mind, or any other potential terminus, then it would be more important that we fill every animal with facts rather than wellbeing. That would be for their greater good, because knowledge of truth is the greatest good. We would desire to raise non-functioning children who play a very mean game of jeopardy, even if they have poor wellbeing.

it still gives me no reason to believe in things I have no reason to believe in except they would make me feel better

This is kind of circular in the way it is phrased. If a belief is conducive to greater personal and social happiness, and if our terminus value is something like “greatest happiness and human flourishment”, then it intuitively makes sense that we believe the thing which maximizes our most important value. There would be no reason to cling to non-beneficial truth, because we already established that goodness is a superseding value over truth and truth is merely instrumental to goodness. The “reason” for a happiness-optimizing belief is that it optimizes happiness. There is no “reason” to believe something that is true-but-useless, as it doesn’t bring us closer to what is most important.

But why not?

Valuing truth more than comfort or equanimity does not mean that its value is infinite relative to comfort or equanimity. Nor does it mean "filling every animal with facts rather than wellbeing."

I do not believe that you are in good faith failing to understand this. I think you think that playing "gotcha" with ridiculous straw men is some sort of winning debate move.

then it intuitively makes sense that we believe the thing which maximizes our most important value

Maybe you can simply choose to believe whatever is most instrumentally beneficial to you, but I can't.

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