thomblake comments on Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation - Less Wrong

17 [deleted] 15 June 2009 07:35PM

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Comment author: MichaelBishop 23 June 2009 12:18:11AM 0 points [-]

There was a post (I'm having trouble finding) with many examples of how "fallacies" can be reasonable forms of argument. e.g. Argument from authority is fallacious, but for many questions, it would be irrational to weight a child's opinion as heavily as an adult's.

Could someone provide the link? Annoyance, perhaps you could respond to it, because you seem very quick to point out fallacies and many in the community think it is sometimes unhelpful.

Comment author: thomblake 23 June 2009 04:53:04PM *  0 points [-]

There's an argument from authority that's a fallacy, and one that's not.

Arguments of the form, "S is an authority on X and says p, so we have reason to think that p" can be valid (possibly missing some easy steps) but might be unsound.

Arguments of the form "S is an authority on X and says p, therefore p" are just plainly invalid.

There is no contradiction here.

Comment author: MichaelBishop 23 June 2009 10:28:12PM 0 points [-]

agreed, still looking for the link.