ChristianKl 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.

Article Navigation

Comments (231)
Tags: practical techniques

Comments (231)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: ChristianKl 15 August 2010 04:38:06PM *  2 points [-]

Similarly, with millions of people dying of cancer each year, there are going to be lots of people making highly unlikely miracle recoveries. If they didn't, that would be surprising.

That's saying it's surprising that nobody lives to the age of 150. Miracle cancer cures are statistical outliers and it would be interest to know the mechanism that allows them to happen.

This is an obvious contradiction: they're claiming a measurable effect on the world and then pretending that it can't possibly be measured.

It's no contraction if you believe in a clever god that doesn't want that the effect gets scientifically measured.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 18 August 2010 06:05:28PM *  3 points [-]

It's no contraction if you believe in a clever god that doesn't want that the effect gets scientifically measured.

But then the believer can't claim God can do things that could be scientifically measured - for instance, curing people who pray more often than people who don't, at least while a scientist is watching. Believers who want to pray for their health should use timeless decision theory to figure out what conditions to meet so that God is allowed to cure them without making that observable to later scientists. Cult startup, anyone?

Comment author: anon895 18 August 2010 06:23:10PM 2 points [-]

A clever god applying its cleverness to the job of making itself invisible is going to succeed.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit