Morgontankar

SaveMe Ohs senaste video som jag la upp igår lämnar mej ingen ro. Den handlar i mina ögon ytterst om vad som är rationellt.

I förordet till första upplagan av min bok "Draget från oändligheten" skrev jag våren 2001 följande: En annan bok än denna är också om det finns kvalitativa skillnader inom konst och musik och estetiska och etiska ideal, eller om det helt enkelt är fråga om mode. Vad denna bok handlar om är en helt annan grundläggande fråga: Vad innebär det att handla och resonera rationellt?

Ett annat svar än mitt på knappt 200 sidor hittade jag igår. Det duger gott som en sammanfattning tycker jag:

"According to many people's worldview, pretty people are assumed to be good, so their actions are interpreted in a positive light, and unattractive people are assumed to be bad, so their actions are interpreted in a negative light. That's how the same action can be interpreted two different ways.

This is self-reinforcing. People build up a store of evidence that pretty people are often cute and charming even when awkward, while ugly people are often losers. They remember their theory as having been confirmed over and over, because they've seen and experienced it over and over.

This is dangerous! It's the danger of the closed mind and the single, static perspective on life.

But we must always interpret the world. There's no way out of that.

The solution is a special kind of worldview, a "rational worldview". It's a worldview with a special property: it isn't self-reinforcing. That means it can correct its errors/mistakes. That's what "rational" means: capable of error correction. And note that's how improvement works: improvements are nothing other than corrections of errors. So "rational" also means "capable of improvement".

There are two kinds of worldviews, self-reinforcing or rational (capable of error-correction/improvement).

The way rational worldviews work is they consider several interpretations of things, look out for biases, challenge their preconceptions, are tolerant of disagreement, are interested in criticism, strive to be self-critical, look at things from other perspectives including unpopular, weird or prima-facie bad ones, and generally live by the *spirit of fallibilism*."

-- Elliot Temple
Fabric-of-Reality@yahoogroups.com