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(Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One).
Book titles are commonly italicized.
Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly.
If the demand were shrinking, not ‘would be’.
(Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One).
Period should go inside the parentheses.
In a demand constrained market—yes.
Add hyphen between ‘demand’ and ‘constrained’.
The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction.
Tenet, not tenant. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/tenant-vs-tenet-difference-usage
The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction.
Should credit Deutsch.
If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral.
Add a comma after ‘cancer’.
[…] and threatened me to damage my reputation.
Drop ‘me’. It should say ‘and threatened to damage my reputation.’
Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral.
The part “This includes those that” doesn’t sound right grammatically. You could instead write: ‘Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. They think that copying business ideas is (im?)moral, that death is moral, …’
Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral […]
Don’t you mean immoral?
This is largely a duplicate of #1633. You’d want to avoid repeating ideas.
Ayn Rand claims that "[t]he virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge [...]." This is wrong, mainly because reason can only be used as a method of choosing between knowledge/ideas, not as a source of knowledge.
So the [...] or ellipsis indicates that the sentence is quoted half way.
Criticism is a form of knowledge. How does reason have access to criticism if reason is not the source of knowledge?
Great. With that in mind, would you like to revise #1617 in such a way that it has no outstanding criticisms? Note that it currently has one outstanding criticism (#1623).
Is irrational just "false" or is there something else to it?
There’s more to it.
Are there true but irrational ideas?
It would be irrational to continue to hold true ideas in the face of unaddressed criticism, yes.
I think rational but false ideas must exist, no?
Yes. Mere falsehood does not imply irrationality.
Okay I read it. Not sure I'm clear on my questions after doing so to be honest.
You asked if irrationality was just false or if there was something else to it. Note that the word ‘false’ does not occur on the linked page. Instead, she mentions the destruction of life, dishonesty, lack of integrity, context dropping, mysticism, and more examples of irrationality. These are attitudes toward truth seeking and their effects.
You asked whether rational but false ideas must exist. That is what Rand means by “not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” Blindness = being wrong on some issue, refusal to see = refusing to seek or recognize the truth on some issue. To her, blindness and the refusal to see are not the same thing, which answers your question.
Fair enough. Will revise. By the way, I prefer when people use their real names. Mind changing yours under settings?
Hi Dennis. You say there can't be true irrational ideas. You also say (#1625) that calling an idea irrational can be short for calling its holder irrational. Consider an irrational person believing some true idea. He is told criticisms he can't address. If he still considers the idea true without addressing those criticisms, if he evades the issue, then he's still being irrational even though the idea is true.
Yeah fair. I'll admit, my example is rather contrived. My hope was to show that one could in principle maintain a belief in god in a rational fashion, at least for a time. However, just because it is theoretically possible doesn't mean that it is at all likely. I agree that this isn't what is usually going with believers.
Is this kid being irrational?
Perhaps not. However, I find your example implausible. Let’s look at it more closely. You originally wrote that a belief in god could be rational if two conditions are both met:
- “[The] belief stems from a sincere effort to explain the world and …”
- “… the believer is ready to jettison his belief if he were to think of some reason why it cannot be true.”
As for 1, a sincere effort to explain the world implies a critical attitude, honesty, conscientiousness/thoroughness, which means subjecting candidate ideas to lots of criticism, following up on counter-criticisms (as opposed to running off and doing something else), etc. A child might prioritize playing in the dirt today, but at some point he will ask questions. A sincere effort to explain anything means he’d rather say ‘I don’t know’ than believe something as silly as god.
God as a concept is arbitrary on its face. It cannot survive even very basic criticism. So it cannot possibly stem from a sincere effort to explain the world.
As for 2, kids ask tons of questions and criticize ideas. They’re naturally curious and conscientious in this way. The problem is that parents beat the god idea into their kids (figuratively if not literally) so that the kids don’t question it. So then those kids are not willing to jettison the idea anymore. Which is why the idea sticks around despite not being a sincere effort to explain the world.
That quote is better but still not quite right. You’d want to end it not in a dangling comma, but in an ellipsis to indicate that you’re cutting the sentence short. Try changing it to:
"The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge […]." This is wrong etc.
Then, in the section “Do the comments still apply?”, be sure to deselect the criticisms that your edit addresses.