I am very happy to see your clarification, you write pretty much nothing I disagree with. I think the only place where we might disagree is the mechanism by which evolution accomplishes its goal of providing for signalling and deception. I believe that evolution usually gives us desires for things like truth and altruism which are, on some mental level, completely genuine. It then gives us problems like akrasia, laziness, and self-deception, which are not under full control of our conscious minds, and which thwart us from achieving our lofty goals when doing so might harm our inclusive genetic fitness.
Therefore, I think that people are entirely truthful in stating the have high and lofty ideals like truth-seeking, they are just sabotaged by human weakness. I think someone who says “I am a truthseeker” is usually telling the truth, even if they spend more time playing Halo than they do reading non-fiction. To me saying someone doesn’t care very much about truthseeking because their behavior does not always seek the truth is like saying someone doesn’t care very much about happiness because they have clinical depression.
I cannot quite tell from your comments whether you hold the same views on this as I do or not, as you do not specify how natural selection causes people to signal and deceive.
Therefore, I think that people are entirely truthful in stating the have high and lofty ideals like truth-seeking, they are just sabotaged by human weakness. I think someone who says “I am a truthseeker” is usually telling the truth, even if they spend more time playing Halo than they do reading non-fiction.
From a construal-level-theory standpoint, we should be talking about people who value truth at an abstract-construal level (from “far”) but whose concrete-construal-level inclinations (“near”) don’t much involve truth seeking. Some people might be inclined to pursue truth both near and far but might be unable to effectively because of akrasia (which I think another line of research, ego-depletion theory, largely reduces to “decision fatigue”).
So, the first question is whether you think there’s a valid distinction to be made, such as I’ve drawn above. The second is, if you agree on the distinction, what could cause people to value truth from far but have little inclination to pursue it near. Consider the religious fundamentalist, who thinks he wants truth but tries to find it by studying the Bible. If this is an educated person, I think one can say this fundamentalist has only an abstract interest in truth. How he putatively pursues truth shows he’s really interested in something else.
The way evolution could produce signaling is by creating a far system serving signaling purposes. This isn’t an either-or question, in that even Hanson agrees that the far system serves purposes besides signaling. But he apparently thinks the other purposes are so meager that the far system can be sacrificed to signaling with relative impunity. The exact extent to which the far system evolved for signaling purposes is a question I don’t know the answer to. But where Hanson goes dangerous is in his contempt for the integrity of far thinking and his lack of interest in integrating it with near thinking, at least for the masses and even for himself.
A rationalist struggles to turn far thinking to rational purpose, regardless of its origins. Hanson is the paradox of an intellectual who thinks contemptuous far thoughts about far thinking.
I am very happy to see your clarification, you write pretty much nothing I disagree with. I think the only place where we might disagree is the mechanism by which evolution accomplishes its goal of providing for signalling and deception. I believe that evolution usually gives us desires for things like truth and altruism which are, on some mental level, completely genuine. It then gives us problems like akrasia, laziness, and self-deception, which are not under full control of our conscious minds, and which thwart us from achieving our lofty goals when doing so might harm our inclusive genetic fitness.
Therefore, I think that people are entirely truthful in stating the have high and lofty ideals like truth-seeking, they are just sabotaged by human weakness. I think someone who says “I am a truthseeker” is usually telling the truth, even if they spend more time playing Halo than they do reading non-fiction. To me saying someone doesn’t care very much about truthseeking because their behavior does not always seek the truth is like saying someone doesn’t care very much about happiness because they have clinical depression.
I cannot quite tell from your comments whether you hold the same views on this as I do or not, as you do not specify how natural selection causes people to signal and deceive.
From a construal-level-theory standpoint, we should be talking about people who value truth at an abstract-construal level (from “far”) but whose concrete-construal-level inclinations (“near”) don’t much involve truth seeking. Some people might be inclined to pursue truth both near and far but might be unable to effectively because of akrasia (which I think another line of research, ego-depletion theory, largely reduces to “decision fatigue”).
So, the first question is whether you think there’s a valid distinction to be made, such as I’ve drawn above. The second is, if you agree on the distinction, what could cause people to value truth from far but have little inclination to pursue it near. Consider the religious fundamentalist, who thinks he wants truth but tries to find it by studying the Bible. If this is an educated person, I think one can say this fundamentalist has only an abstract interest in truth. How he putatively pursues truth shows he’s really interested in something else.
The way evolution could produce signaling is by creating a far system serving signaling purposes. This isn’t an either-or question, in that even Hanson agrees that the far system serves purposes besides signaling. But he apparently thinks the other purposes are so meager that the far system can be sacrificed to signaling with relative impunity. The exact extent to which the far system evolved for signaling purposes is a question I don’t know the answer to. But where Hanson goes dangerous is in his contempt for the integrity of far thinking and his lack of interest in integrating it with near thinking, at least for the masses and even for himself.
A rationalist struggles to turn far thinking to rational purpose, regardless of its origins. Hanson is the paradox of an intellectual who thinks contemptuous far thoughts about far thinking.