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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30730 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Can you believe right now that your computer is on fire? (if so, could you take a second and do so?)

I find that I cannot bring myself to believe my computer is on fire. Likewise, I find that I cannot bring myself to believe that Communism is a beneficent and efficient political system. Granted, I did not try very hard; a handful of seconds each.

Examining these two failures, I find that while instantiating each of these beliefs is too hard to manage with minimal effort, they are hard for entirely different reasons. When I try to believe that my laptop is on fire, my brain checks against sense data of my eyes and hands, which immediately contradict the idea. When I think of Communism, my brain goes to memory, cached thoughts and arguments. It seems to me that the two types of belief are engaging with completely different mental processes; concrete vs abstract, say.

Suppose I concede that concrete processes really can enforce belief. Why should this make me believe that abstract processes can be similarly forced?

It's not just sense data. For an example, suppose I asked you to believe that your computer (or phone or whatever you're using) would catch on fire in 1 minute. You have no sense data to contradict that (at least, for the next minute). But I assume you can't just make yourself believe that your computer's about to catch on fire without being given any sort of evidence in favor of it.

This wouldn't seem to be using the concrete mechanism you described, I would think?

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