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For the first time on this forum, I find myself agreeing almost entirely with a blogger's original post. Just thought I'd encourage Wilkinson and others who would follow his lead that he has struck a chord.

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Wilkinson, I addressed many of these issues in Why Truth? and What's a Bias? If you find fault with my reasoning there, feel free to post it in a comment here. Incidentally, I aspire to dramatize and romanticize rationality because I believe Rationality is a dramatic and romantic endeavor, one of the great high melodies sung in the unfolding epic poem of Humankind.

I agree with Glen that truth is a subgoal of nearly any goal that requires cognition, up to and including walking across a room. When you successfully locate and sit down on a chair, you are committing an act of truthfinding no less than believing that humans evolved by natural selection. The politics and arguments and surrounding verbal bibblebabble are more complicated in the second case, but the math is the same.

Robin, we've differed on this before, but I still object to your calling people who deliberatively endorse truth yet engage in self-deluding behavior "hypocrites". Traditionally, a "hypocrite" is someone who verbally advocates a morality which they do not privately believe. Many people claim to believe in a morality, and internally believe they believe in the morality, yet commit some acts not in accordance with it; these people are traditionally called "sinners". People who say they believe in truth (honestly, without knowing intent to deceive you) and then self-deceive are sinners, not hypocrites.

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