billswift comments on Rationality quotes: May 2010 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: ata 01 May 2010 05:48AM

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Comment author: billswift 01 May 2010 07:25:30PM 2 points [-]

He is assuming that there will be a doomsday - also known as begging the question (http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#begging). It is also quite possible that no doomsday predictions are true. This is one of my gripes with existential risk theories, all I have read depend on the assumption that eventually there will be an end.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 01 May 2010 08:21:41PM 5 points [-]

He is assuming that there will be a doomsday - also known as begging the question

No, I don't think so. He is making a claim about what implications follow from a certain fact. That fact is the definition of "a doomsday prediction". All that follows from that definition is that all but one will be false. Of course, even that last one (so to speak) might be false, but, even if this is so, it doesn't follow from the definition.

This is not a case of begging the question. It is just being clear about what implies what.