That’s not what I mean. Suppose you have various negative personality traits that are negatively influencing your life (e.g. perhaps you are selfish or short-tempered). If you don’t carefully cull the people around you, you might start noticing that many people react negatively to you, and you might start wondering why. If you determine that the problem is with you and not them, that’s an opportunity for growth. If you only surround yourself with people who are willing, for whatever reason, to ignore your negative personality traits, then you’ve lost an opportunity to notice them.
Similarly, and this should be scary to anyone who cares about epistemic rationality, suppose you have various false beliefs and you decide that those beliefs are so important to your identity that people who don’t also believe them can’t possibly love you the way you are, so you only surround yourself with people who agree with them...
Similarly, and this should be scary to anyone who cares about epistemic rationality, suppose you have various false beliefs and you decide that those beliefs are so important to your identity that people who don’t also believe them can’t possibly love you the way you are, so you only surround yourself with people who agree with them..
Sure, in such a case, I’ve optimized for my own ‘social harmony’. We all do this to varying degrees anyway. Signalling, sub-cultures and all that blah. Note that the quote simply speaks of a process (selection) to maximize an end (social harmony, however that is defined). It doesn’t say anything about whether such selection should be for false or true values (however these are defined).
That’s not what I mean. Suppose you have various negative personality traits that are negatively influencing your life (e.g. perhaps you are selfish or short-tempered). If you don’t carefully cull the people around you, you might start noticing that many people react negatively to you, and you might start wondering why. If you determine that the problem is with you and not them, that’s an opportunity for growth. If you only surround yourself with people who are willing, for whatever reason, to ignore your negative personality traits, then you’ve lost an opportunity to notice them.
Similarly, and this should be scary to anyone who cares about epistemic rationality, suppose you have various false beliefs and you decide that those beliefs are so important to your identity that people who don’t also believe them can’t possibly love you the way you are, so you only surround yourself with people who agree with them...
Sure, in such a case, I’ve optimized for my own ‘social harmony’. We all do this to varying degrees anyway. Signalling, sub-cultures and all that blah. Note that the quote simply speaks of a process (selection) to maximize an end (social harmony, however that is defined). It doesn’t say anything about whether such selection should be for false or true values (however these are defined).