Darmani comments on Five-minute rationality techniques - Less Wrong

55 Post author: sketerpot 10 August 2010 02:24AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (231)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Darmani 10 August 2010 02:35:52AM *  7 points [-]

Candidate 1: "If a trillion trillion trillion people each flip a hundred coins, someone's going to get all heads." ("If a trillion people each flip a billion coins" might be a stronger meme, though extremely inaccurate.)

Candidate 2: "Knowing the right answer is better than being the first to argue for it."

Candidate 3: "If it moves, you can test it."

Comment author: sketerpot 10 August 2010 03:17:46AM 2 points [-]

Those are catchy! Of course none of those is an explanation that most people can use -- the inferential distance is pretty big -- but they'd make great sound-bite segues to a slightly longer explanation.

If you just hit someone with a zinger like that, it'll feel to them that you're just scoring points, and they might get annoyed; but if you use it as the start of a discussion, that's likely to be perceived as more respectful.

Comment author: wedrifid 10 August 2010 10:48:45AM 1 point [-]

I like 1 and 3 but I'm dubious about 2. I am not convinced that it is true in the case of most humans. I'd like it to be but most people live sufficiently in a social reality that actually being right is not all that important.

Comment author: NihilCredo 11 August 2010 03:28:46PM *  2 points [-]

"Learning the right answer is better than having come up with the wrong one"?