I’m confused by your response. You’ve used a lot of pronouns, so in this context, I’m interpreting your sentence as rationality being a means to the end of truth. However, because of the pronouns, your sentence brings to mind the question: Can rationality be used as a means to ANY end?
If a person values personal happiness, can a rationalist present rationality as a way to be happy? If a person values a successful, blissful marriage, can a rationalist present rationality as a means to love your wife? And (just for the sake of testing the extremes) can rationality be a means to knowing God more deeply?
I mean that to care about truth you have to have something to protect. You have to care about what’s true because you desperately want to actually achieve a goal, rather than fitting in with the people who talk about achieving the goal.
If rationality requires truth, and truth requires a motivation, can rationality exist as a motivation on its own? To me, it seems not.
I think my wording of the second sentence you quoted actually sabotaged the question I was really asking. Can rationality give a person happiness given that’s their goal?
If rationality requires truth, and truth requires a motivation, can rationality exist as a motivation on its own?
It logically can exist as a motivation of its own, but a great many think that they have such motivation, far more than actually do. Even if one feels that one seeks truth for its own sake, it’s probably not true.
I think I remember that Nietzsche did not believe it was possible.
Can rationality give a person happiness given that’s their goal?
Rationality gives people different things depending on the person and their environment. The best way to predict what would happen in a hypothetical scenario is to be rational. Being able to predict things accurately probably causes more happiness than it prevents, for most. This is a mild side effect of rationality, things designed around happiness would have more of a chance of being good at affecting that (I suspect most basically fail and there are a few gems there).
My view that others, such as Eliezer, do not share is that rationality is much more related to losing than to winning. Rationality prevents people from making mistakes, this is only equivalent to winning and positively creating success if one goes on a significant not-losing streak.
So I’d say that if you are happy naturally, and unhappy when bad things happen to you, it will probably help a lot. If you are naturally unhappy, and need good things to happen to be happy, it won’t make you happy at all, it will only lessen the frequency and severity of failures and problems. It helps one’s net happiness but doesn’t make one happy.
I’m confused by your response. You’ve used a lot of pronouns, so in this context, I’m interpreting your sentence as rationality being a means to the end of truth. However, because of the pronouns, your sentence brings to mind the question: Can rationality be used as a means to ANY end?
If a person values personal happiness, can a rationalist present rationality as a way to be happy? If a person values a successful, blissful marriage, can a rationalist present rationality as a means to love your wife? And (just for the sake of testing the extremes) can rationality be a means to knowing God more deeply?
I failed to communicate, sorry, I will try again:
One can value rationality/(systematically believing true things and trying to shed false beliefs) as a means or an end.
Not exactly
I mean that to care about truth you have to have something to protect. You have to care about what’s true because you desperately want to actually achieve a goal, rather than fitting in with the people who talk about achieving the goal.
If rationality requires truth, and truth requires a motivation, can rationality exist as a motivation on its own? To me, it seems not.
I think my wording of the second sentence you quoted actually sabotaged the question I was really asking. Can rationality give a person happiness given that’s their goal?
It logically can exist as a motivation of its own, but a great many think that they have such motivation, far more than actually do. Even if one feels that one seeks truth for its own sake, it’s probably not true.
I think I remember that Nietzsche did not believe it was possible.
Rationality gives people different things depending on the person and their environment. The best way to predict what would happen in a hypothetical scenario is to be rational. Being able to predict things accurately probably causes more happiness than it prevents, for most. This is a mild side effect of rationality, things designed around happiness would have more of a chance of being good at affecting that (I suspect most basically fail and there are a few gems there).
My view that others, such as Eliezer, do not share is that rationality is much more related to losing than to winning. Rationality prevents people from making mistakes, this is only equivalent to winning and positively creating success if one goes on a significant not-losing streak.
So I’d say that if you are happy naturally, and unhappy when bad things happen to you, it will probably help a lot. If you are naturally unhappy, and need good things to happen to be happy, it won’t make you happy at all, it will only lessen the frequency and severity of failures and problems. It helps one’s net happiness but doesn’t make one happy.