AdeleneDawner comments on Norms survey (dead) - Less Wrong

0 Post author: Cayenne 10 May 2011 11:01AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (71)
Tags: norms rationality community

Comments (71)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: prase 10 May 2011 12:26:18PM 1 point [-]

Can you explain why this is a very high priority for you?

Any phrase beginning with "we should believe that" seems outright irrational. Rational beliefs are grow from evidence, not moral reasoning of any kind.

  • Instead of saying "we should believe that the Earth is round because it looks round when seen from the space", just say "the Earth is round because it looks round when seen from the space". The latter sentence is clearer and doesn't lack anything important which the former has.
  • If you rather had in mind something like "we should believe that the Earth is round because else, we are no rationalists", rather say "the belief in non-round Earth is not rational (given such and such definition of rationality)".
  • If the proposed norms are intended rather procedurally, such as "we should believe that the Earth is round because whoever doesn't will be forever banished from this community", just say "whoever doesn't believe in round Earth will be forever banished from this community".

Except the last variant, the formulations without "should" don't sound like norms, and that's a feature, not a bug. Or at least should be.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 10 May 2011 12:45:12PM 0 points [-]

Instead of saying "we should believe that the Earth is round because it looks round when seen from the space", just say "the Earth is round because it looks round when seen from the space". The latter sentence is clearer and doesn't lack anything important which the former has.

The latter sentence parses as either malformed or false, to me. The earth appears to be round from space because it's round, not vice versa; the earth is round because of the forces that were involved in its creation.

I do agree that the 'should' needs to go, but I think the formulation should look something like 'it is rational to believe [thing] because [evidence]' or 'I/we believe [thing] because [evidence]'.

Comment author: prase 10 May 2011 12:59:13PM 1 point [-]

Fair enough. "Because" itself isn't perfectly transparent word: X because Y may mean that

  • (etymologically) Y is a cause of X: "I have been arrested because I have robbed a bank."
  • Y is a purpose for X: "I robbed the bank because I wanted the money."
  • X is logically deducible from Y: The apple fell down because of the laws of gravity.
  • (and I believed that also) X is probabilistically deducible from Y. I have used the word "because" in this sense, as a shorthand for "and the evidence for the previous claim is that", which after all may be ungrammatical.

In any case, should is redundand.

Comment author: Cayenne 10 May 2011 01:01:11PM 0 points [-]

This is a good way to formulate it. I'll implement this now.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit