Re: Changing ones mind

From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2003 - 21:24:59 MST

  • Next message: Samantha Atkins: "Re: Changing ones mind"

    > (Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@aeiveos.com>):
    >
    > > I pretty much always toed the LP party line about "privacy"
    > > and never thought much about it until I encountered discussions
    > > here about Brin's book and other work along those lines.
    >
    > Lee, could you cite which of Brin's works you are thinking
    > about? I'm not familiar with them all and am having problems
    > placing the reference. [Thanks].

    Sorry, "Transparent Society". I'm not sure what philosophical
    positions one might change because of the Uplift novels. :-)

    > > It wasn't so much a matter of changing my opinions, but of
    > > being induced to think more carefully about something I hadn't
    > > before, and winding up coming to conclusions I hadn't expected.
    >
    > Ah-ha -- so this (in my speak) isn't a case of "changing ones mind"
    > it is a case of "transforming the believer". You did not adopt
    > a different set of ideas -- you became a person in which the
    > old ideas could not survive (i.e. you lost the base of support
    > for those memes).

    I'm not sure I see much of a distinction there, but if you mean
    to say that it's not an example of my changing fundamental values,
    that's right. I simply came to discover that something normally
    associated with those values doesn't really fit. But I wouldn't
    say that of, say, my abandonment of pacifism; in that case I
    genuinely changed my values: from seeing violence as inherently
    evil to seeing as a tool like any other, to be judged by the
    purpose to which it is put.

    > > Minds that can't change are broken.
    >
    > *Unless* they just happen to be right.

    Perhaps "unwilling to" might be better than "can't" there.
    One can be willing to change without ever actually changing
    because you happened to be right the first time.

    -- 
    Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
    "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
    are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
    for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
    


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