gwern comments on Contests vs. Real World Problems - Less Wrong

15 Post author: badger 25 March 2009 01:29AM

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Comment author: gwern 25 March 2009 03:33:18PM 2 points [-]

Ad hominems. We are so well schooled in 'traditional' deductive rationality that we instinctively shy away from using this strategy, even though it's quite powerful and often we're using it in practice anyway.

Comment author: Cyan 25 March 2009 04:09:32PM *  3 points [-]

...we instinctively shy away from using this strategy... often we're using it in practice anyway.

Is this not contradictory?

Comment author: gwern 28 March 2009 02:31:34PM 1 point [-]

You understand the hypocrisy, then. We rely on this very general & valid strategy in all sorts of real-life real-money situations, but when it comes to discussions of complex important topics? All of sudden it is 100% verboten.

This, it seems to me, is exactly what a underused rationalist cheat would look like.

Comment author: ciphergoth 02 April 2009 09:37:00PM 3 points [-]

Can you give an example of something that this change would sanction?

Comment author: thomblake 02 April 2009 04:19:19PM 2 points [-]

This, it seems to me, is exactly what a underused rationalist cheat would look like.

I agree that it seems to match my impression of what the form should be. However, it's not just an arbitrary rule to not use ad hominem arguments. Ad hominem is a formal fallacy - non-fallacious ad hominems are really not all that unheard-of in academia.

Comment author: [deleted] 17 April 2012 04:03:19PM *  0 points [-]

Well...

Comment author: gwern 17 April 2012 05:06:01PM 0 points [-]

I don't think that post disagrees with me.

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