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PeterDonis comments on The Criminal Stupidity of Intelligent People - Less Wrong
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Yes, this reminds me of someone I talked to some years back, who insisted that she trusted people's intuitions about weather more than the forecasts of the weatherman.
It was unhelpful to point out that the weatherman also has intuitions, and would report using those if they really had better results.
In this particular case, I agree with you that the weatherman is far more likely to be right than the person's intuitions.
However, suppose the weatherman had said that since it's going to be sunny tomorrow, it would be a good day to go out and murder people, and gives a logical argument to support that position? Should the woman still go with what the weatherman says, if she can't find a flaw in his argument?
Well, I wouldn't expect a weatherman to be an expert on murder, but he is an expert on weather, and due to the interdisciplinary nature of murder-weather-forecasting, I would not expect there to be many people in a better position to predict which days are good for murder.
If the woman is an expert on murder, or if she has conflicting reports from murder experts (e.g. "Only murder on dark and stormy nights") she might have reason to doubt the weatherman's claim about sunny days.
You don't get it. Murder is NOT an abstract variable in the previous comment. It's a constant.
I thought I understood what I was saying, but I don't understand what you're saying. What?