ciphergoth comments on Awful Austrians - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Swimmy 12 April 2009 06:06AM

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Comment author: RobinHanson 12 April 2009 07:00:57PM 26 points [-]

I'm an economics professor in one of the few departments where people specialize in Austrian economics, and after years of exposure to them: I still don't understand what they are claiming. Of course each person ends up with many specific beliefs, and many of those beliefs are correlated with being in that group. But that is not the same as core claims that they share because they are in that group.

If I can't understand someone's claims, and I'm not sure they even have clear claims, then I can't exactly say they are wrong. In contrast, theism does make relatively understandable claims.

Comment author: ciphergoth 13 April 2009 09:34:30AM 6 points [-]

theism does make relatively understandable claims.

Depends what you mean by "understandable". It seems to make claims that most people think they understand, but I am inclined to think that this is an illusion, that actually religious language only has connotations and doesn't denote anything. As teageegeepea references below, religion is "not even wrong". This case is made pretty strongly at the start of George H Smith's "Atheism: the case against God".

Comment author: AndySimpson 13 April 2009 09:37:07AM 1 point [-]

Agreed --- most religion is poetry masquerading as assertion. What makes it nasty is when people think they can pin down those assertions precisely and live their lives by them.