This article is a deliberate meta-troll. To be successful I need your trolling cooperation. Now hear me out.
In The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You Eliezer talks about asognostics, who have one of their arm paralyzed, and what's most interesting are in absolute denial of this - in spite of overwhelming evidence that their arm is paralyzed they will just come with new and new rationalizations proving it's not.
Doesn't it sound like someone else we know? Yes, religious people! In spite of heaps of empirical evidence against existence of their particular flavour of the supernatural, internal inconsistency of their beliefs, and perfectly plausible alternative explanations being well known, something between 90% and 98% of humans believe in the supernatural world, and is in a state of absolute denial not too dissimilar to one of asognostics. Perhaps as many as billions of people in history have even been willing to die for their absurd beliefs.
We are mostly atheists here - we happen not to share this particular delusion. But please consider an outside view for a moment - how likely is it that unlike almost everyone else we don't have any other such delusions, for which we're in absolute denial of truth in spite of mounting heaps of evidence?
If the delusion is of the kind that all of us share it, we won't be able to find it without building an AI. We might have some of those - it's not too unlikely as we're a small and self-selected group.
What I want you to do is try to trigger absolute denial macro in your fellow rationalists! Is there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people? Yes, I pretty much ask you to troll, but it's a good kind of trolling, and I cannot think of any other way to find our delusions.
Honestly, I'd love to believe I was imagining things and that it happened the way they said it did. The alternative is truly frightening and disheartening -- but I can't convince myself that it isn't a more accurate description of reality, based on the available evidence.
I could answer each of your arguments, but that's not the point of this thread; the point was to answer the original request for something which I "consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people". As I said before, the bulk of the counter-arguments I have seen thus far have been flawed at best, and strike me quite firmly as rationalizations.
Nonetheless, I'll be happy to continue answering your points (well, not happy happy, it's not like I have the time to kill, but I recognize that I threw down the gauntlet on this one so I have a sort of obligation not to walk away unless it's by mutual consent; to do otherwise would be a tacit admission that I can't really counter your points and am just hand-waving) -- but I suspect that to do so in the face of your distaste for it (and the negative points I've received -- were my comments inappropriate or off-topic? I apologize, if so) would be somewhat sociopathic, and I don't wish to further reduce my site-karma
Maybe you're right, maybe it is rational to believe the official story. My statement is an opinion -- but as it is an assertion of fact rather than a matter of personal taste, it can still be wrong, and I'm not making the claim you imply I am making (that it's an opinion and therefore not arguable).
Your links to ShortPacked and XKCD are essentially argument by ridicule, by the way, not a counterargument (and the ShortPacked is also a straw man, since you imply a position which I do not take on this issue) -- though I do understand them as an expression of your frustration, given the apparent firmness of your belief in this matter.
There is one point which I can't allow to stand, however: you say "every human being who has brought numbers to the table has confirmed the simple, obvious story of events." I don't know where you came across that claim, but it is completely and stunningly untrue. Where did you find it?
You're right about the comic strip links, or, at least, about the Shortpacked! one - I was being a jerk, and your arguments don't deserve that. (The xkcd one I would stand by, if it weren't assuming as true the precise thing we are in disagreement about - in general, the rise of conspiracy theories is only marginally associated with the existence of a conspiracy, and I do consider the controlled demolition story about 9/11 to be a conspiracy theory, but that doesn't make it false. Particularly given the known track record of the second Bush administration.... (read more)