Eugine_Nier comments on A potentially great improvement to minimum wage laws to handle both economic efficiency as well as poverty concerns - Less Wrong

0 Post author: VijayKrishnan 26 July 2011 12:07AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 27 July 2011 06:47:26AM 4 points [-]

The "if data disagrees with my view so the data is wrong" reaction is exactly what I thought makes it a good litmus test.

No, this is a case of "the data fails to agree with observation and furthermore is in a field notorious for data manipulation and sometimes outright falsification, therefore the data is wrong with high probability".

Relying on "data" even when it blatantly contradicts direct observation, as you seem to insist on doing, is precisely the kind of straw rationality gives rationality in general a bad name and more importantly causes many rationalists to fail.