From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 19:53:16 MDT
On 6/17/2003, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>The part I'm not sure whether we agree is on the best strategy for
>>someone who generally accepts the goals that evolution has given them, a
>>standard mix of life, status, children, etc., and in a situation where
>>the future will not be that different from the 20th century or before.
>... why the counterfactual?
>>The vast majority of humanity believes they are in this situation.
>What of it? ... As it happens the belief is wrong, and isn't that the
>point? ...
It sounds as if you don't disagree with my claim; you just don't see why I
would bother to make such a claim.
There are many things that I do not like about academia, but on this point
I have internalized the academic priority given to intellectual
modularity. In academia, different people work on different topics, and
hope to combine their results later. When discussing each topic, one tries
to minimize the dependencies of results in this area to results in other
areas. Of course there will have to be some dependencies, but avoiding
unnecessary dependencies allows more rapid progress, just as modularity
aids the design of most systems.
If there is a standard position in some area, and a contrarian alternative
position in that area, and you are doing work in some other area which
depends on this first area, your first priority is to say what the standard
position would imply for your research, and only after having done that may
you turn to seeing what the alternative position would imply.
I am trying to make our discussion of "why believe in truth" be modular
with respect to the very contrarian position that our goals are very
different from what evolution has given us, or that the world will soon be
very different from what evolution has adapted to. The fact that you and I
might happen to agree with this contrarian position is besides the
point. My first priority is to make our conversation be accessible and
relevant to the majority who do not share this contrarian position.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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