cousin_it comments on Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism - Less Wrong

104 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 April 2009 02:44AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 21 April 2009 01:26:58PM *  8 points [-]

Superhappies would ask you, in the name of fairness, to invent a symmetric rite of admission for atheists. Some Bayesian-obvious truth that would sound similarly unacceptable to their social circle.

For example, we atheists could get a taste of theists' feelings by declaring aloud that "women/blacks and men/whites don't have equal intelligence on average" and watching the reactions. A "bigoted" version of Dawkins or Eliezer could arise and argue eloquently how this factual statement is irrelevant to morality, just like the issue of god's existence. That was inflammatory on purpose; you could go for something milder, like the goodness of monarchy relative to democracy.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 21 April 2009 03:41:11PM -2 points [-]

For cooperation to arise, the opposing side needs to have relative advantage. For the theists to ask atheists to argue for theism, they should consider atheists to be better at arguing for theism than they are. Fairness is not just about symmetry, but also about cooperation. And cooperation requires improvement in the outcome for all sides.

Comment author: cousin_it 21 April 2009 04:02:41PM 2 points [-]

I wasn't asking atheists to argue for theism. And I don't understand your reply at all. Could you explain?