From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat May 31 2003 - 14:01:03 MDT
Olga Bourlin wrote:
>
> If the comment, "I believe I was given a special gift from God" is *not*
> arrogant, then what is? This kind of reminds me when a plane crashes where
> (i.e.) 199 people die and one person survives, the survivor usually says,
> "It's a miracle! God saved *me!*" God always get the credit (one
> survivor), but never the blame (199 deaths). Each one of us (although
> irreplaceable and exceedingly precious to ourselves and to those who love
> us) is one little monkey in 6,000,000,000+ (and counting). To believe any
> one of us is any more "special" to some supernatural unseen unknowable
> nonexistent nonbeing-with-a-mean-streak is at the very least little goofy,
> and indubitably arrogant. In short, the unfortunate (but right on) phrase
> "get over yourself" comes to mind ...
Er... leaving aside the question of why someone else's attitude should
even anger you in the first place: any person not already a signed and
sealed rationalist, who walks out the sole survivor of a train crash that
killed 199 other people, can be forgiven for wondering whether something
strange is going on. If you are a naive statistician, it requires no
great bias toward self-importance - it is only natural - to look at the
smoking wreckage and say to yourself: "What the heck?" I see no reason
why the same train of thought should not honestly occur to a 13-year-old
who finds himself graduating college.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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