[ExI] Human extinction

[Emlyn]

2008/8/18 Anna Taylor <femmechakra at yahoo.ca>:
> --- On Mon, 8/18/08, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The faithful, especially that variety, tend not to run on rationality; >they prefer I think to be guided by gut instinct. Also, when you don't >have any way to measure merit in a group, you have to structure in other >ways, notably by baser measures of status (political ability will be the >thing). And, they are absolutely awesome at ignoring the elephant in the >livingroom; they wont feel bound by such simplistic things as the bald >truth.
>
> Emlyn I'm confused.  You don't appear to be a person that believes in faith so how do you base your opinion? I believe myself someone of high rationality and still think that my gut reactions are worth some debate.  It could be simply mean that I've had many experiences that have led me to believe my opinions have some merit.  Bald truth is mathematical unless it has not yet been computed therefore if someone simply ignores the elephant in the room is because "they choose" and/or "don't know" that it is there, is this what you mean?

I'm definitely an Atheist, yes. But we all live on an amount of faith,
so of course I have experience of it from the inside like all people.
Even if that faith is something along the lines of "the universe
behaves in a generally self similar way from moment to moment", it's
still faith in a sense. I'd argue there's a qualitative difference
between that and "there's a big guy running the show who loves us all
and wants to punish us for our sins".

Now on rereading my paragraph above, I'd say I'm unfairly singling out
those of faithful. You could apply it to any group of people united by
a cause, I guess. I think fundamentalist religious people (which was
where this thread started) are a particularly good example, but they
are definitely not the only example.

Eliezer talks about cults a bit on http://www.overcomingbias.com,
using the Objectivists as an example of a "rationality" based cult, a
good counterexample if you're tired of people picking on the
religious.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com