Nietzsche on pluralism
In essentials they were already the same thoughts which I now take up again in the treatises at hand: let us hope that the long period in between has been good for them, that they have become more mature, brighter, stronger, more perfect! That I still hold fast to them today, that they themselves have, in the meantime, held to each other ever more firmly, indeed have grown into each other and become intermeshed, strengthens within me the cheerful confidence that they came about not singly, not arbitrarily, not sporadically, but rather from the beginning arose out of a common root, out of a basic will of knowledge which commands from deep within, speaking ever more precisely, demanding something ever more precise. For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to be single in anything: we may neither err singly nor hit upon the truth singly. Rather, with the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit our thoughts grow out of us, our values, our yes’s and no’s and if’s and whether’s—the whole lot related and connected among themselves, witnesses to one will, one health, one earthly kingdom, one sun.—And do they taste good to you, these fruits of ours?—But of what concern is that to the trees! Of what concern is that to us, us philosophers! …
GM Preface, §2
William James on dogmatism and its origins; fruitful pathologies
Dogmatic philosophies have sought for tests for truth which might dispense us from appealing to the future. Some direct mark, by noting which we can be protected immediately and absolutely, now and forever, against all mistake — such has been the darling dream of philosophic dogmatists. It is clear that the origin of the truth would be an admirable criterion of this sort, if only the various origins could be discriminated from one another from this point of view, and the history of dogmatic opinion shows that origin has always been a favorite test. Origin in immediate intuition; origin in pontifical authority; origin in supernatural revelation, as by vision, hearing, or unaccountable impression; origin in direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing itself in prophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterance generally, — these origins have been stock warrants for the truth of one opinion after another which we find represented in religious history. The medical materialists are therefore only so many belated dogmatists, neatly turning the tables on their predecessors by using the criterion of origin in a destructive instead of an accreditive way. They are effective with their talk of pathological origin only so long as supernatural origin is pleaded by the other side, and nothing but the argument from origin is under discussion. But the argument from origin has seldom been used alone, for it is too obviously insufficient.
[…]
In the end it had to come to our empiricist criterion: By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots.
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No appearances whatever are infallible proofs of grace. Our practice is the only sure evidence, even to ourselves, that we are genuinely Christians.
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Why not simply leave pathological questions out? To this I reply in two ways: First, I say, irrepressible curiosity imperiously leads one on; and I say, secondly, that it always leads to a better understanding of a thing’s significance to consider its exaggerations and perversions, its equivalents and substitutes and nearest relatives elsewhere. Not that we may thereby swamp the thing in the wholesale condemnation which we pass on its inferior congeners, but rather that we may by contrast ascertain the more precisely in what its merits consist, by learning at the same time to what particular dangers of corruption it may also be exposed.
[…]
In the autobiography of that high-souled woman, Mrs. Annie Besant, I read the following passage: “Plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselves to help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its support.
Some one ought to do it, but why should I?” is the ever reëchoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. “Some one ought to do it, so why not I?” is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.” True enough! and between these two sentences lie also the different destinies of the ordinary sluggard and the psychopathic man. Thus, when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce — as in the endless permutations and combinations of human faculty, they are bound to coalesce often enough — in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. Their ideas possess them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or their age.
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No one organism can possibly yield to its owner the whole body of truth. Few of us are not in some way infirm, or even diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine quâ non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one’s interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking Heaven that it hasn’t a single morbid fibre in its composition, would be sure to hide forever from its self-satisfied possessors?
Peter Thiel on envy
Envy is the one mortal sin that is still completely taboo. All the others can be turned into a positive. Envy is the one we still don’t talk about, and I suspect it’s the one that is still pervasive and most destructive.
Tyler Cowen on how to be a good agnostic
Given the radical uncertainty of the more distant future, we can’t know how to achieve preferred goals with any kind of certainty over longer time horizons. Our attachment to particular means should therefore be highly tentative, highly uncertain, and radically contingent.
Our specific policy views, though we may rationally believe them to be the best available, will stand only a slight chance of being correct. They ought to stand the highest chance of being correct of all available views, but this chance will not be very high in absolute terms. Compare the choice of one’s politics to betting on the team most favored to win the World Series at the beginning of the season. That team does indeed have the best chance of winning, but most of the time it does not end up being the champion. Most of the time our sports predictions are wrong, even if we are good forecasters on average. So it is with politics and policy.
Our attitudes toward others should therefore be accordingly tolerant. Imagine that your chance of being right is three percent, and your corresponding chance of being wrong is ninety-seven percent. Each opposing view, however, has only a two percent chance of being right, which of course is a bit less than your own chance of being right. Yet there are many such opposing views, so even if yours is the best, you’re probably still wrong. Now imagine that your wrongness will lead to a slower rate of economic growth, a poorer future, and perhaps even the premature end of civilization (not enough science to fend off that asteroid!). That means your political views, though they are the best ones out there, will have grave negative consequences with probability .98 (one minus two percent, the latter being the chance that you are right on the details of the means-end relationships). In this setting, how confident should you really be about the details of your political beliefs? How firm should your dogmatism be about means-ends relationships? Probably not very; better to adopt a tolerant demeanor and really mean it.
As a general rule, we should not pat ourselves on the back and feel that we are on the correct side of an issue. We should choose the course that is most likely to be correct, keeping in mind that at the end of the day we are still more likely to be wrong than right. Our particular views, in politics and elsewhere, should be no more certain than our assessments of which team will win the World Series. With this attitude political posturing loses much of its fun, and indeed it ought to be viewed as disreputable or perhaps even as a sign of our own overconfident and delusional nature.
Stubborn Attachments, Chapter 6—Must uncertainty paralyze us?
Tyler Cowen on reasons to be dogmatic
In strict Bayesian terms, most innovators are not justified in thinking that their new ideas are in fact correct. Most new ideas are wrong and the creator’s “gut feeling” that he is “onto something” is sometimes as epistemologically dubious as is the opinion of the previous scientific consensus. Yet we still want that they promote these new ideas, even if most of them turn out to be wrong.
In this view, the so-called “reasonable” people are selfishly building up their personal reputations at the expense of scientific progress. They are too reasonable to generate new ideas.
To put it another way, there are two kinds of truth-seeking behavior:
Hold and promote the view which leads to society most likely settling upon truth in the future, or
Hold and promote the view which is most likely to be correct.
These two strategies coincide less than many people think.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/08/the-five-best-r.html
“We genuinely just want to do what’s best for the world”
Someone recently described their in-group as follows:
We genuinely just want to do what’s best for the world.
How many humans have motivations this pure, and this transparent? Perhaps there are some. But I would guess that the vast majority who understand themselves this way are, in fact, misguided.
My guess is that most of us do better if we think of our motives as somewhat complex and mysterious—not simple and transparent.
I’m assuming that a more accurate self-understanding leads to better consequences on average. I can imagine cases, perhaps entire domains, where this is false. But on average, “know thyself” is a good rule, I would say.
My impression is that the way we think, the way we recognise and weigh reasons, is heavily shaped by our motives in complex and pervasive ways that are hard to recognise or understand.
If that’s right, then a simple story about motives will lead us to misunderstand our own thought. “I genuinely just want to do what’s best for the company”, says the employee, agreeing uncritically with the reasoning of their superior.
For my part, I like the story of: “we’re trying to create and play status games with positive externalities”. “Positive externalities” captures the altruistic aspiration, while “status games” expresses realism about human nature, a sense of how hard it is to create and maintain systems where social status even vaguely tracks the promotion of the good.