duckduckMOO comments on Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test - Less Wrong

14 Post author: OrphanWilde 27 July 2012 05:45PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (276)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: duckduckMOO 31 July 2012 02:07:54PM 1 point [-]

"Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it."

It can't be a good counterargument if there's a good obvious counterargument to it. obvious but not good is fine, good but not obvious might be/is sorta fine but not both. You could well have meant either, as a forward slash tends to mean or, but I and/or is also pretty common. Good argument shouldn't mean "momentarily convincing if I don't think through the consequences." Unless you mean good to include good for advancing the discussion but I didn't get that impression and in any case it's still worth saying that's not what most people mean when they say something is a good argument.

"If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both." <--- that shouldn't be happening. If an argument is convincing despite it having a convincing counterargument that means you weren't paying enough attention.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 31 July 2012 02:54:54PM 0 points [-]
  • Unless you mean good to include good for advancing the discussion but I didn't get that impression

Advancing the discussion was the purpose of the rules I tried to forward. See this statement: "A faulty line of argument provides opportunity for rebuttal, and so for our test has value even then; that is, I want some faulty lines of argument here"

After all, there may be a non-obvious counterargument to the obvious counterargument. A faulty line of argument may be a good line of argument wrapped in unnecessary faulty logic or assumptions.