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fortyeridania comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong
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Contrarians of LW, if you want to be successful, please don't follow this strategy. Chances are that many people have raised the same possibility before, and anyway raising possibilities isn't Bayesian evidence, so you'll just get ignored. Instead, try to prove that the stuff is bullshit. This way, if you're right, others will learn something, and if you're wrong, you will have learned something.
(1) Insisting that those who disagree with you prove their opinions sets too high a bar for them. Being light means surrendering to the truth ASAP.
(2) Raising possibilities is Bayesian evidence, assuming the possibility-raiser is a human, not a random-hypothesis generator.
Yeah, and if the possibility-raiser is a human who would have provided evidence if they had any, then raising possibilities without evidence is Bayesian evidence in the other direction :-)
I think "try to prove" was an importantly different word choice from "prove" in cousin_it's comment. The point is that in the context of a "new age" movement, it may be enough to raise the possibility; people really may not be thinking about it. In the context of Less Wrong, that is not usually enough; people are often already thinking about evidence for and against.