@Hopefully Anonymous: I’m glad to see robust criticism of Eliezer and his foil-seeking relationship with religion on this blog. Let’s encourage Eliezer to focus more on innovating ways to overcome bias and less on these type of foil-seeking contrasts (the guy who likes space shuttles vs. the guy who claims to believe in Jesus as God).
I’m not criticizing the fact that Eliezer is promoting the benefits of placing emotional investment in the merely real. I’m just disagreeing with him on one specific point of fact: the scientific evidence seems to suggest that humans have an in-built desire to hold a religious belief system, as I defined it above.
Furthermore, I think that overcoming belief in the unreal is an important part of overcoming bias. Just look at the Intelligent Design movement in the US—an example of how emotional investment in unreal things leads to the worst kind of sophistry: a concerted attack on rational thinking and science.
@Hopefully Anonymous: I’m glad to see robust criticism of Eliezer and his foil-seeking relationship with religion on this blog. Let’s encourage Eliezer to focus more on innovating ways to overcome bias and less on these type of foil-seeking contrasts (the guy who likes space shuttles vs. the guy who claims to believe in Jesus as God).
I’m not criticizing the fact that Eliezer is promoting the benefits of placing emotional investment in the merely real. I’m just disagreeing with him on one specific point of fact: the scientific evidence seems to suggest that humans have an in-built desire to hold a religious belief system, as I defined it above.
Furthermore, I think that overcoming belief in the unreal is an important part of overcoming bias. Just look at the Intelligent Design movement in the US—an example of how emotional investment in unreal things leads to the worst kind of sophistry: a concerted attack on rational thinking and science.