AlexU comments on Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted - Less Wrong

56 Post author: Alicorn 27 April 2009 04:49PM

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Comment author: AlexU 01 May 2009 04:25:33PM 1 point [-]

You've never heard of the ad hominem fallacy, I take it?

Comment deleted 01 May 2009 04:50:17PM [-]
Comment author: AlexU 01 May 2009 06:36:01PM *  2 points [-]

Discounting an argument because of the person making it is pretty much the textbook definition of ad hominem fallacy.

Also, it should go without saying that being a theist doesn't automatically mean one believes in a loving and all-powerful god watching over us. And anyway, I still don't follow the logic that being a theist means one can't make sensible decisions about the Singularity (insofar as one can say there are "sensible decisions" to be made about something that's basically a sci-fi construct at this point.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 May 2009 04:59:56PM *  1 point [-]

What distinguishes the topic of singularity from any other pursuits in which theists are empirically known to be able to excel? In each case, knowing that a person is a theist somewhat decreases your confidence in the accuracy of their judgment, but not dramatically. Is there something specific that places this topic in different light? (I think there is, but I don't feel like spinning a lengthy argument right now, and I'm curious about how thought-through that harshly-downvoted sentiment above was.)

Comment deleted 01 May 2009 05:16:51PM *  [-]
Comment author: AlexU 01 May 2009 06:39:46PM 0 points [-]

Your conception of "theism" -- a tremendously broad concept -- is laughably caricatured and narrow, and it pollutes whatever argument you're trying to make: absolutely none of the logic in the above post follows in the way you think it does.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 May 2009 05:35:51PM 1 point [-]

I don't believe this is a valid thought in this form, or maybe you failed to formalize your intuition enough to communicate it. You list a few specific failure modes, which I don't believe can cover enough of the theistic people to reduce the probability of a theistic person producing valid singularity thinking down to nothingness. Also, some of these failure modes overlap with related failure modes of non-theistic people, thus not figuring into the likelihood ratio as much as they would otherwise.