David Deutsch: belief

Transcript context

…Interesting. Why do you think the relationship between advicee and advice giver is dangerous? Oh, well, because it's one of authority. I tried to make this example of, quote, advice that I just gave, I tried to make it non authoritative. I just gave an argument for why certain other arguments are bad. So, if it's advice of the form, “a healthy mind and a healthy body, or don't drink coffee before 12 o'clock, or something like that?” It's an argument. If I have an argument, I can give the argument and not tell the person what to do. Who knows what somebody might do with an argument, they might change it to a better argument which actually implies a different behavior. I can contribute to the world and make arguments as best I can. I don't claim that they are privileged over other arguments. I just put them out because I think that argument works. And I expect other people not to think they work. Like we've just done this in this very podcast: I put out an argument about AI and that kind of thing, and you criticized it. If I was in the position of making that argument and saying that “Therefore you should do so and so!” that's a relationship of authority, which is immoral to have. Well, David, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and thanks so much.…

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