lukeprog comments on Yes, a blog. - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Academian 19 November 2010 01:53AM

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Comment author: taw 24 November 2010 03:32:14AM 17 points [-]

Maybe I'm just being habitually contrarian here for no good reason, but it seems to me that for a supposedly "rationalist" community, people here seem to be far too willing to accept claims of LessWrong exceptionality based on shockingly weak evidence. Group-serving bias is possibly the most basic of all human biases, and we cannot even overcome that little?

Claiming that your group is the best in the world, or among the best, is something nearly every single group in history did, and all had some anecdotal "evidence" for it. Priors are very strongly against this claim, even after including these anecdotes.

Yet, in spite of these priors, the group you consider yourself member of is somehow the true best group ever? Really? Where's hard evidence for this? I'm tempted to point to Eliezer outright making things up on costs of cryonics multiple times, and ignoring corrections from me and others, in case halo effect prevents you from seeing that he's not really extraordinarily less wrong.

Comment author: lukeprog 12 June 2011 11:11:58AM 13 points [-]

I'm tempted to point to Eliezer outright making things up on costs of cryonics multiple times, and ignoring corrections from me and others.

Please do.