knb comments on Splinters and Wooden Beams - Less Wrong

1 [deleted] 28 February 2010 08:26AM

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Comment author: orthonormal 28 February 2010 08:53:55PM 9 points [-]

I would bet large sums of actual money that your paper has far less effect than you anticipate it will. As one who once occupied the precise epistemological niche you're trying to now reach, I can tell you with certainty that your argument (even fully fleshed out) would have utterly failed to move me, and not on account of any special obtuseness of mine.

Not only are there eloquent Catholic philosophers to reassure smart Catholics that NFP occupies a very different ontological niche than other methods of avoiding conception, but they will reject the claim that your formal argument is the essence of the Catholic rationale behind these policies.

Essentially, though, the real problem is that should you succeed, the goalposts will be moved, because the actual reasons why (many intelligent) people believe certain things are not encapsulated by the arguments they explicitly make.

Comment author: knb 01 March 2010 01:39:45AM -1 points [-]

You clearly don't know how effective I thought it would be. The purpose of the paper was to be a helpful tool, for others to use, I didn't think it was going to be very successful by itself.