| Apologies for the wall of text, but your reply triggered something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I agree with you on many points, but the word "preferable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It doesn't describe who it is preferable to, or how objective outcomes inform people's preferences, or whether this preference only exists when it is non-uniformly distributed across the world. I believe that more precise empirical knowledge of the world is preferable, but I don't think it generalises - or naturalises - to human cognition. Or that it is causally related to reduction of colonial genocide and economic exploitation. Anecdotally, I know a number of people who prefer their "objectively better" life courtesy of vigorous anti-intellectualism, conspiracy, religious fundamentalism, internalised naturalisation of race/gender/faith/etc. And other cognitive distortions - as I would call them. Again though, I agree with you because I believe (among other things) that less human suffering is preferable, increased longevity is preferable, our species surviving longer is preferable, and other species surviving with us is also preferable. And I believe more precise empirical knowledge is the best way to achieve those things. But many, many people disagree, and many just believe differently. As far as we know, that disagreement is not due to a kind of naturalised deficiency of cognition. |