Emile comments on Why some people seem to be proud of their ignorance? - Less Wrong

14 Post author: uzalud 31 December 2011 01:38PM

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Comment author: Emile 01 January 2012 10:15:55AM *  1 point [-]

You realize that such epistemic habits would never lead you to truth if you were indoctrinated with a different prior? "I don't care what the atheists say about he Problem of Evil, they would be wrong for a host of other reasons even if the theologians' arguments suck."

Then in that case it's not just a different prior I'd need, it's the "host of other reasons", and more specifically, strong reasons among those.

I agree that there's an important distinction between "argument A can be ignored because there are much stronger arguments for the same position" (roughly my position) and "argument A can ignored because there are many more arguments for the same position("arguments are soldiers", leads to the problem you describe).

My purpose is to mostly avoid long debates that won't change either side's mind anyway even if one convinces the other on that particular issue (like "does Barack Obama pick his nose?").