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The miracles of self-deception. Column in ComputerreOnline #53
If I were doing this for myself, it would be immoral. But for ... (insert the appropriate: Science, Democracy, Patriotism, Family Values, Faith, the State, the Nation, Freedom, the Good of the Company, the People…) I must do it.
I concluded the previous column with a mention of an unresolved problem: how should society be organized so that people’s behavior within it reflects their rational conceptions of morality rather than archaic behavioral programs? This is a large and complex question, and I will not address it now. First, let us discuss another problem that seems simpler: how can a rational, reflective human learn to govern himself, controlling the action of anachronistic programs of his own psyche?