= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
dlthomas comments on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (694)
I took the survey.
Like several other people, I was a bit bothered by the P(God) type questions. For some of those, my belief depends on an argument for the impossibility of, say, God, rather than on any particular evidence. In that case, am I supposed to take into account my uncertainty as to the validity of my argument? Or just put 0?
How do you distinguish between 1) a universe wherein a genuinely omnipotent agent is impossible, and 2) a universe with a genuinely omnipotent agent who makes it seem like a genuinely omnipotent agent is impossible?
It's not so much the "genuinely omnipotent" bit that I have philosophical problems with as the idea of "ontologically basic mental entities". I don't think this is the place to go into it fully, but suffice it to say that nowadays I'm not sure if that even makes sense. If I don't think a situation makes sense, how can I assign it a probability?
Of course, I could weigh that against the probability that I'm mistaken, but I'm not sure whether we're meant to take that kind of thing into account.
My understanding is that we're absolutely supposed to take that sort of thing into account.
Yeah I think you're right; I hereby retract my worries!
The only way I've found is to attack the idea of omnipotence on the basis of logic. If the questioner is allowed to insist I "consider the possibility of a universe where logic isn't valid," I can only dismiss his question as nonsense.