[ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>

> Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle
> and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse
> on their parts?

Yes.  (And I would guess that many of the slaves probably didn't think 
slavery was "perfectly natural.")

Thomas Jefferson also considered slavery to be natural (at least, he 
certainly used free labor to his advantage to get "ahead"), But Thomas 
Paine, a contemporary of Jefferson's, did not.  I consider Thomas Paine 
smarter and more rational.

If cultural development, as you impute, is what's responsible for people 
seemingly being more smart and rational, then cultural development lifts up 
the whole lot of people who get exposed to it, making the "sheeple" smarter 
and more rational.

Olga