I write as an exercise of honesty and to put myself (and my peers) on alert for irrational convictions I may harbor or areas of thought in which I might irrationally relax my skepticism.
So, here's my list...
I want the world to be understandable:
- to me: I want amazing complexities to be explicable in terms of amazing simplicities. (Hence my attraction to metaphysical naturalism and all forms of reductionism.)
- to others: I want there to be rational pressure towards convergence in the beliefs of all sufficiently informed and rational agents. If two people disagree, I want this to be traceable to an intellectual flaw (in either knowledge or rationality) on the part of one or other party.
I want all "revealed" holy-book or tradition-based (or otherwise backward-looking) religions to be fundamentally in error, and demonstrably so. I don't care about deism though. And I would be delighted if the sort of religious picture explored here turned out to be true.
I want it to be possible to really improve the world; for left-wing political ideals (like an unconditional basic income) to be practical and successful; for egoistic and parochial doctrines to be refuted.
I want artificial intelligence to be a real possibility.
I want philosophical progress to be possible -- and actual.
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I personally seek out disturbing concequences for my own views. Your views SHOULD have some disturbing concequences because it is impossible to avoid them. So in themselves are not evidence the view should be changed unless they are MORE disturbing than others. I also think views ae more reliable when they are against my own interests and thus these are some of my beliefs I am most vocal about.
ReplyDeleteI also like to confront people with those disturbing concequences of their own ideas.
Having said that I want there to be a logical explination for everything (but I dont expect it to exist at the superficial level).
I want there to be rational pressure towards convergence (and expect that to exist even if the convergant answer is "it is all random".)
I want there to be a true religion - one that is reasonably plesant (because this is higher utility universe).
I want the universe to be improvable through government manipulation - because it offers so much more potential. I dont care how that is done, since careing will inevitably result in choosing hte wrong path since I believe it is very easy to prove no one standard ideology has it right.
> I want artificial intelligence to be a real possibility.
I hope it isn't It will make the moral issues slightly easier. But if it is (and I think it is) I see it as inevitable and not somthing to fear in itself.
I very modestly claim to have less biases than anyone else. Which is my HUGE bias/wishful thinking issue !!
GeniusNZ