Comment by lo_zamoyski

Comment by lo_zamoyski 7 days ago

6 replies

View on Hacker News

If everyone has their own truth, then how could you know that to be the case? You'd have to appeal to something outside of "your truth" to make that judgement. Meaning, if it were even possible (or coherent) for there to be such a thing as "your truth", then you couldn't know it to be the case. It simply would be "the truth" as far as you are concerned. You can't step outside yourself. There is no "objective POV".

These sorts of claims are as incoherent as the equally intellectually jejune skeptical positions ("there is no truth" or "we cannot know the truth" or variations thereof). It's rare to see anyone outside of first year philosophy students make them.

Why can't you just say we have disagreements about what the truth is?

InfinityByTen 6 days ago

That's another way to put it. The disagreement doesn't still elevate either party to a moral high ground. That was the only thing that upset me about this write up.

Reply View 4 replies
  • shw1n 6 days ago

    I'm not claiming moral high ground, or that my method is a better or happier way of living life, I'm only claiming it's better for finding out what's true, with the assumption some objective truth exists.

    The sentence that covers this in the piece:

    "If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge their choice to remain in the bubble, that’s totally fair. I respect it like I’d respect anyone who chooses to participate in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."

    Reply View 3 replies
    • cauch 5 days ago

      I think the problem is that everyone is claiming they don't remain in the bubble, including you. Why should I trust you when you say you don't remain in your bubble or that you are motivated in finding the truth, especially when you write an article that checks all the boxes of someone who is satisfied with comfortable conclusions?

      It's the problem with this sentence:

      > Because if a desire to seek truth isn't there

      The behavior of other people makes way more sense if you just consider that people have different values and different interests. If you take your list of values, people that are not aligned with you will, by definition of not being aligned, look to you as they are not desiring to seek the truth. For two reasons: 1) because some of the things you believe being truth are just BS. You are wrong (as we all are sometimes on some topics), and you are just seeing them dismissing something false and, in fact, they are the ones being interested in seeking the truth while you are not, 2) because some of the things you believe being an important truth is not important or relevant for them. I'm pretty sure you don't "display a desire to seek the truth" when it comes to the VIIth century Buddhist philosophy. Sure, if someone talks about it to you, you may say you are interested and follow what they say, but you still will look "not desiring to seek the truth": if they bring a conundrum in this topic to you, you will not drop everything and scream "oh my god, I need to find the answer, nothing else matter now". That's an extreme example, and there is a spectrum, but that illustrates that some of these people who you categorize as "not desiring to seek the truth" are in fact desiring to seek the truth, just not with the same path as you are, so they look like that to you. And, guess what, _you_ look like you don't desire to seek the truth to them.

      That sentence is, to me, very very telling: it did not even one second occur to you that maybe they are interesting in seeking the truth but are doing it in a different way or on different subjects. And by doing so, by not carefully considering all the possibilities, you show that yourself you have equally no desire to seek the truth. (if you see what I mean: you see Mr A not exploring all the possibilities on the subject that you like, so you conclude that they have no desire to seek the truth, but then, Mr A sees you not exploring all the possibilities on some subjects that you are overlooking. How is that different?)

      That is exactly the same problem with the "consciously acknowledge their choice to remain in the bubble": a majority of them are not in a bubble, but it looks like that you because you are not aligned with them. And you are explaining that moderate like you, some of them are in a bubble, but others are not. The only possibility to your eyes to not be in a bubble is to be aligned with you. The only possibility for them to not be in a bubble is to be aligned with them.

      Reply View 2 replies
      • shw1n 4 days ago

        This entire argument is based on incorrect assumptions.

        I'm not just inferring this from different values. As I said in the article, people are openly and literally telling me they'd prefer to stay in the bubble:

        "I'll often ask: if the opposite of your beliefs were true, would you want to know?

        Surprisingly, I've had good friends, who enjoy political debate, explicitly answer ‘no’. And even many who initially answer ‘yes’ will later admit to the answer really being ‘no’."

        Desiring to seek truth is not referring to the energy someone is willing to expend, it's related to this^ ignoring, or asking to stop once an exploration proves the fundamental belief their world rests on as false.

        edit: punctuation

        Reply View 1 reply
        • cauch 4 days ago

          Hm, not sure it's a convincing argument, though.

          For example, how do you correct for the sample bias? You are saying in your article that "moderate" (aka, people aligned with your current evaluation of what is sensible) are the ones that are more prone to get outside of their bubble. You don't evaluate that on a unbiased sample, you evaluate that amongst your friends, with whom you have, according to you, had longer discussion on the subject (and if you did not, then, this question is not very reliable).

          So, first, if someone is not aligned with you, the conversation relationship will not be the same as someone aligned with you. You even say that you play the devil's advocate, but playing the devil's advocate with a moderate person or a person with a more particular word view does not lead to the same conversation relationship. For illustration, let's put people on a 1-to-10 scale. The moderate is "5", the "far-left" is "0" and the "far-right" is "10". If you play the devil's advocate with a far-left that says "0 is great", you will say "10 is great", which is 10 distance away in dissidence. If you play the devil's advocate with a moderate that says "5 is great", then you can say "0 is great" or "10 is great", which is just 5.

          In other words, it is easier to "alienate" or "put on a defensive" a non-moderate than a moderate. It does not mean that the moderate is more open, just that they are, circumstantially, in a situation where your game is easy for them to play (if the world was -5 to 5, then "5" would answer "no" after you played the devil's advocate by defending the option "-5").

          On top of that, you are probably a worst devil's advocate when it comes to play the devil's advocate with someone that you agree a lot with (if you had good argument against being a moderate, then you will probably be yourself convinced by these arguments and not be a moderate).

          Also, it's interesting that they say "no", it shows that they care a lot about what is true or not. Basically, what they say is that they care so much about what is true that in the unrealistic case that they are abominably wrong, knowing it was the case would be very sad for them. They also did not form their belief spontaneously: they grow up into it, step by step, each step based on their evaluation of what is true or not. Your question is basically the same as asking "would you be happy to hear it that you personally failed repeatedly during your whole life", which is strongly emotional. Again, the situation is not the same for a moderate, which may just not care much about the truth or be happy to adopt whatever position (or not, but it's a counter-example where answering "yes" may not prove that someone cares about the truth).

          After that, you may say "they will not get out of their bubble because of the emotional cost", but you will still have nowhere to conclude if they value the truth less or more than you. Maybe they value the truth more than you, and it is why you failed to reach the same belief alignment than them: they choose these beliefs because they were looking for the truth and they are convinced that these beliefs are better aligned with the truth, while, on your side, you did not care enough about the truth to find the same path. (it is not what I think, but it is a counter-example where someone will say "no" to this question and yet be more interested of the truth than someone who will say "yes")

          The hypothetical question should rather be "if you lived in a parallel universe where the opposite of your current beliefs were true, would you grow up to end up believing in the opposite of your current beliefs".

          Reply View 0 replies