One thing I'll say for the people who believe they have the truth: they tend to believe that Reality Matters.
The people I find much more different and disconcerting are those who don't really believe in reality or truth at all. Ideas are largely just signaling, interpersonal or personal, ritual incantations to make someone feel something. It took me years to get a handle on this strange notion, but I think it's pretty widespread.
Today's post, Guardians of the Truth was originally published on 15 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
There is an enormous psychological difference between believing that you absolutely, certainly, have the truth, versus trying to discover the truth. If you believe that you have the truth, and that it must be protected from heretics, torture and murder follow. Alternatively, if you believe that you are close to the truth, but perhaps not there yet, someone who disagrees with you is simply wrong, not a mortal enemy.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Hug the Query, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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