With a couple of minutes’ thought: A memetic immune system is whatever allows or rejects new memes as one encounters them, and kills previously accepted memes. Reason is a piece of it that, among other uses, kills falsehoods. That means it kills protective and comforting lies, approximations to the truth, etc., which might have had their purposes in the past. If, for example, your reason is strong enough to kill “I should behave well because God will punish me if I don’t”, but not strong enough to come up with a good moral framework to replace it, then you may have a problem while that situation persists.
Re reason: The real issue is that whenever we make moral judgements, we probably don’t realize that we are imposing our values on it.
That’s why from the perspective of a fanatic like Ziz doesn’t believe they’re irrational, primarily because the Zizians and LW have fundamentally unbridgeably opposed values.
With a couple of minutes’ thought: A memetic immune system is whatever allows or rejects new memes as one encounters them, and kills previously accepted memes. Reason is a piece of it that, among other uses, kills falsehoods. That means it kills protective and comforting lies, approximations to the truth, etc., which might have had their purposes in the past. If, for example, your reason is strong enough to kill “I should behave well because God will punish me if I don’t”, but not strong enough to come up with a good moral framework to replace it, then you may have a problem while that situation persists.
Re reason: The real issue is that whenever we make moral judgements, we probably don’t realize that we are imposing our values on it.
That’s why from the perspective of a fanatic like Ziz doesn’t believe they’re irrational, primarily because the Zizians and LW have fundamentally unbridgeably opposed values.