Rationality Quotes October 2011

MinibearRex

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Can you point out where Yvain makes those comments that you think violate b and c? Reading that post it looks to me like Yvain's points are a little more nuanced than that.

Note incidentally that while you might be able to use the word that way, the vast majority of people who use it seem to use it in a way closer to what sketerpot is talking about. If one interacts at all with either young earth creationists or homeopaths for example it often doesn't take long before the term is thrown around.

Note incidentally that while you might be able to use the word that way, the vast majority of people who use it seem to use it in a way closer to what sketerpot is talking about. If one interacts at all with either young earth creationists or homeopaths for example it often doesn't take long before the term is thrown around.

In my experience scientists arguing with creationists (I haven't looked at arguments with homeopaths) frequently make the mistakes I list above, as well as a few related ones. In particular using the AJ Milne quote ciphergoth cited ... (read more)

1Eugine_Nier15y

Here are some excerpts from Yvain's comments that exhibit the problems I mentioned, (as well as others that maybe I should add). [...] This essentially error (b) with elements of (c). From a Bayesian perspective "saying there are likely flaws in mainstream medical research" does mean one should decrease the weight one assigns to all medical findings, thus one should assign more (relative weight) to other, non-scientific, evidence, e.g., evidence likely to be based an anecdotes. [...] This argument violates conservation of expected evidence. [Here follows several paragraphs describing of how much he discourages people from being afraid to take statins along with some references to "good doctors" and "correctly prescribed statin" that seem to be there to help set up a potential No True Scotsman] If my doctor recommends I take statin, I don't care about the base rates for statin "correctly prescribed" by "good doctors", I care about the base rate of statin as actually prescribed by actual doctors. Then Nancy tells her anecdote [...] Yvain's reply begins: [...] Funny how he didn't see fit to mention this it his first post while he spent several paragraphs arguing for why satins are perfectly safe. [...] I'm not sure but somehow I suspect these numbers assume the statin was prescribed "correctly". Furthermore, they certainly don't take into account the base rate for medical studies being false. Also, he next says: [...] Somehow I suspect the numbers he gives in the preceding paragraph assumed no drug interactions.

6

Rationality Quotes October 2011

6

6

6

Rationality Quotes October 2011

6

6