thomblake comments on Taboo "rationality," please. - Less Wrong

23 Post author: MBlume 15 March 2009 10:44PM

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Comment author: Johnicholas 16 March 2009 03:00:44PM * 0 points [-]

I voted it down, and this is my reasoning:

The post starts out by saying "me too". This is not helpful.
The post admits that there's evidence of rationalization, and rather than reducing confidence in the conclusion, it merely reaffirms the original claim.
The post throws very strong anthropic and singularity talk around incautiously and (in my opinion) inexpertly. These are controversial and nearly off-topic ideas, and discussion should admit the controversy and treat them cautiously.

Comment author: thomblake 16 March 2009 03:15:09PM 5 points [-]

This point does not seem to degrade the comment.
Rationalization is the standard method of generating explanations - first, one acts, then one comes up with a set of reasons why that happened, which are not necessarily causally related to the action. Wish I had a link to the relevant studies handy.
it's ridiculous to expect a comment to even mention the controversy around the Singularity and the 'anthropic argument'. If you don't know what they are, then you can look them up in all their controversial glory. If you do, then you already know they're controversial. And if something is 'nearly off-topic' then by the definition of 'nearly' it's not off-topic, so I'm not sure what your point is there. And to find a singularity-fan in this crowd should not be a surprise to you; it's another perspective from which to approach the question, and it's clear that this is the perspective of the poster.