[ExI] Existential hysteria

[Anders Sandberg]

There is a fair amount of motivated cognition going around (not just among AGW deniers, but among AGW supporters), and even is-ought confusion. I wrote a little essay about it:http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/06/do_we_have_to_be_good_to_set_things_right.html
BillK <pharos at gmail.com> , 24/7/2014 12:54 AM:

The tragic ones are the libertarians. The changes required to fix AGW 
run directly against their individualistic ideology. The obsession of 
libertarians with individual liberty crowds out the value of truth. So 
they find themselves forced to deny the obvious climate changes going 
on around them. 
It might be a Tetlockian sacred value: to libertarians freedom is essentially the only sacred thing that must not be traded for anything secular. Most other views have different sacred values, and do not usually place freedom in that category. So they are OK with trading some forms of freedom for other things, like better clima te. But this is as outrageous to a libertarian as putting an explicit dollar value on human lives is to most people (to them human lives are sacred values that must not be traded for secular money value). End result: various psychological mechanisms erupt and people behave irrationally. 

Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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