jimrandomh comments on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think - Less Wrong

15 Post author: WrongBot 13 July 2010 04:44AM

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Comment author: WrongBot 13 July 2010 09:09:49PM 3 points [-]

This post is seeing some pretty heavy downvoting, but the opinions I'm seeing in the comments so far seem to be more mixed; I suppose this isn't unusual.

I have a question, then, for people who downvoted this post: what specifically did you dislike about it? This is a data-gathering exercise that will hopefully allow me to identify flaws in my writing and/or thinking and then correct them. Was the argument being made just obviously wrong? Was it insufficiently justified? Did my examples suck? Were there rhetorical tactics that you particularly disliked? Was it structured badly? Are you incredibly annoyed by the formatting errors I can't figure out how to fix?

Those are broadly the sorts of answers I'm looking for. I am specifically not looking for justifications for downvotes; really, all I want is your help in becoming stronger. With luck, I will be able to waste less of your time in the future.

Thanks.

Comment author: jimrandomh 13 July 2010 10:53:29PM 9 points [-]

I think it would've been better received if some attention was given to defense mechanisms - ie, rather than phrasing it as some true things being unconditionally bad to know, phrase it as some true things being bad to know unless you have the appropriate prerequisites in place. For example, knowing about differences between races is bad unless you are very good at avoiding confirmation bias, and knowing how to detect errors in reasoning is bad unless you are very good at avoiding motivated cognition.