Ok, so you can see that he and I have a history here. It seems pretty likely to me that his most recent comments were motivated by personal animus. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Comment author: pedanterrific 21 October 2011 03:51:20AM * 3 points [-]

Okay, looking back, wedrifid lays out his point as:

brazil84 didn't learn from the opinions and reasoning of other fairly rational and intelligent people.

brazil84 expended sufficient energy on the topic in question to be able to arrive at a sane conclusion.

brazil84 did not arrive at a sane conclusion.

Don't do what brazil84 did because it makes you wrong and also makes you look silly.

And you respond with... an ad hominem in the form of an appeal to motive.

Hm.

Comment author: brazil84 comment score below threshold [+] (123 children)

Comment author: pedanterrific 21 October 2011 04:03:29AM * 0 points [-]

What's wrong with that?

There's this thing, it's called 'logical fallacies'. We try to avoid them here. It's kinda the point.

Edit: Let me put it this way: the fact that you reached an incorrect conclusion and acted like you didn't get what was wrong with that was sufficient reason for wedrifid to act as he did. To impute other motives for no apparent reason is... well, it's rude.

Comment author: Desrtopa 21 October 2011 04:11:36AM 2 points [-]

Well, if someone has motives for making a statement aside from its truth, then it will tend to decrease the degree to which the statement is conditional on the truth, and thus its weight as evidence. So while "A has ulterior motives for saying X, therefore X is false" is certainly fallacious, "A has ulterior motives for saying X, therefore decrease the weight of evidence you assign to X" is not. It can, however, be such an insignificant presentation of evidence as to be distracting and logically rude.

Comment author: pedanterrific 21 October 2011 04:19:11AM 1 point [-]

Yes, this is what I'm getting at.

And when X = [the sky is blue], you shouldn't decrease the weight of evidence you assign to X at all, because the statement was never evidence of that in the first place: it's just remarking on something obvious.

Comment author: Desrtopa 21 October 2011 04:32:04AM 5 points [-]

And when X = [the sky is blue], you shouldn't decrease the weight of evidence you assign to X at all, because the statement was never evidence of that in the first place: it's just remarking on something obvious.

It's still evidence; it's more likely conditional on the sky being blue than conditional on the sky not being blue. But the weight of one remark is very weak evidence compared to that which is already available to you.

If everyone started asserting that the sky was green, that it had always been green, and that you must be delusional for remembering otherwise, you might be wiser to doubt the input of your own senses.

Although if you're questioning your own sanity, I suppose it might be likelier that you're imagining that everyone has started claiming that the sky is green than that you're imagining that it's blue and that people ever used to say so.

Comment author: pedanterrific 21 October 2011 04:41:44AM 1 point [-]

Okay, maybe "at all" was an exaggeration.

And this reminds me of a post a while back about the reliability of peer-reviewed science journals over your own senses. (The catch being that you can't extract information from science journals without using your senses.)

Comment author: brazil84 21 October 2011 04:27:57AM -1 points [-]

By the way, can you explain to me what you think it is that I am (or should be) trying to accomplish here?

I'm not so sure bringing this to people's attention is in your best interests.

What interests are you referring to?

Comment author: pedanterrific 21 October 2011 04:36:43AM 0 points [-]

I assumed you were playing a status game; all "oh woe is me, wedrifid is unfairly persecuting me for besting him in an argument (which is blurred by the passage of time and to which I will not provide a link)". In which case, bringing up that specific argument - in which you are clearly in the wrong - would seem to work at cross-purposes.

That's just the impression I was operating under when I wrote that comment, mind.

Comment author: brazil84 21 October 2011 04:42:18AM -2 points [-]

I assumed you were playing a status game;

Lol, thanks for your concern about my motivations.

Anyway, I'm pretty confident that I was in the right in my previous exchange but I prefer to discuss it in the previous thread. If you see a flaw in an argument I presented, feel free to present it (preferably there). I promise to consider it in good faith.

Comment author: brazil84 21 October 2011 04:24:12AM -2 points [-]

Let me put it this way: the fact that you reached an incorrect conclusion and acted like you didn't get what was wrong with that was sufficient reason for wedrifid to act as he did. To impute other motives for no apparent reason is... well, it's rude.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Wedrifid seemed to be saying that it was necessarily wrong for me to put little weight on the opinions of other posters. In essence, I asked him to spell out his argument. At that point, he got pretty nasty. And as noted, he didn't actually make an argument on the merit's of Knox's guilt or innocence. Nor did he make an actual argument for why I should have put more weight on the opinions of other posters. He asserted his conclusion.

When somebody makes a statement like that, as if it's from authority, it's reasonable to point it out if they have an agenda.

Comment author: pedanterrific 21 October 2011 04:48:56AM * 0 points [-]

And as noted, he didn't actually make an argument on the merit's of Knox's guilt or innocence.

For one thing, he wasn't really talking to you, but to people already convinced of her innocence.

Nor did he make an actual argument for why I should have put more weight on the opinions of other posters.

Once you accept the implications of Aumann's Agreement Theorem, the only reason not to would seem to be extremely low opinions of their intelligence and rationality.

It's a combination of having little respect for the opinions of anonymous internet posters

Well, guess that answers that.

Comment author: brazil84 21 October 2011 05:06:09AM -2 points [-]

For one thing, he wasn't really talking to you, but to people already convinced of her innocence.

I'm not sure what difference this makes. He publicly pronounced my earlier conclusion to be insane, in response to a post I made. When somebody behaves like that, it's reasonable to point out that there may be some personal animus involved.

Well, guess that answers that.

FWIW, the only person here whose opinion I have some degree of respect for is Eliezer and even he has lost a lot of his edge over the years. Not that it matters, since I mainly go by peoples' actual arguments on the merits and not their opinions.

Comment author: bigjeff5 07 November 2011 11:33:00PM 0 points [-]

I really think you aught to start reading through the sequences on rationality and biases, but you might need to start with basic logic first.

If you've read them already, then I'm just shocked. Maybe read them again? I don't know what else to suggest.

The fact that you can continue to argue that Knox and Sollecito are guilty with a 90% confidence, after it has been proven within the limits if modern science's ability to prove anything, that there is not one trace of physical evidence that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder, is just mind blowing to me.

All of the arguments presented to you are going to fail, because they are based on critical thinking and logic, and you don't seem to be capable of these.

To repeat a previous poster, the fact that you are a lawyer and show such a complete inability to reason (to the point that you think logical fallacies are reasonable arguments in some cases*) is downright scary.

*Motive is reasonable evidence for adjusting credibility, but it is always weak and often insignificant. It should never, ever be used to claim an argument is false. The most you can claim is uncertainty of the truth of an argument if the motive is sufficiently strong.

continue this thread »

Comment author: brazil84 21 October 2011 04:14:43AM -2 points [-]

There's this thing, it's called 'logical fallacy'

Sure, and the fallacy does not automatically apply every time one poster comments on another poster's motivations. Note that wedrifid did not make any actual argument about Knox's guilt or innocence in his post; he did however offer his opinion that my conclusion on this issue was not sane.

brazil84 comments on Amanda Knox: post mortem - Less Wrong

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