Oddbean new post about login | logout That might diminish the power of the ideas, humans are never perfect
That's an odd thing to say. Are you not capable of separating two independent subjects in your mind/thoughts?
Its called human bias
That's not true. If you think analytically, you should be able to distinguish properties, characteristics, etc that are relevant, then base your judgement on those. Any shortcuts you take that involve the "human" are variations of deferring thinking to said human and relying on (possibly unwarranted or unjustified) trust. That isn't necessary at all. And, actually is a weird choice in itself given the miriad of vulnerabilities that are rooted in good intentions gone bad as opposed to "evident bad actoe" doing evil.
*typo: myriad
Maybe you’re touching the point of the note here which is: Separate ideas from people and use them. That’s it, trying to understand intentions is a separate thing.
If by 'use them' you mean use the ideas, then yes. I mean to say that "intentions" are always tricky. Is a person evil and lying to you about their intentions? Are their intentions good but they got blind-sided? Are their intentions good, but they made a silly mistake that ruins everything? All outcomes are a problem, regardless of whether the person is bad. But, taking the meta-perspective for a bit, ... have you noticed that all such discussions boil down to "can I trust X"? My claim is: maybe it's not about "trusting X" but about how we can make it work without (completely) relying on trust. Ideas are often tricky, with subtle nuances. Killing your heroes may kill their best version of the idea. (I did not plan this conclusion beforehand. 😅)