View source for No safe defense

In this crazy world, there's no simple procedure you can follow, no finite checklist or fixed ritual you can obey to ensure that your reasoning has been defensible and your actions just. There is a sense in which '''you are never ''safe'''''. There's no one you can ''trust''; the full force of your skepticism must be applied evenly, everywhere. It may be tempting to seek out some authoritative book, like the Bible, or the ''Feynman Lectures on Physics'', and trust that everything in the book is true. But the book is only probabilistic evidence about the state of the world, however strong. Authorities can be trusted exactly as much as a rational evaluation of the evidence deems them trustworthy, no more and no less. The Way is math, the math is precise, and math does not respond to human needs for closure and certainty.

==See also==
*[[Rationalists should win]]

==Blog posts==
*[http://lesswrong.com/lw/qf/no_safe_defense_not_even_science/ No Safe Defense, Not Even Science] by [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]]
*[http://lesswrong.com/lw/s0/where_recursive_justification_hits_bottom/ Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom] by [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]]