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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong
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Shouldn't there never be a shortage of weak arguments for anything? Strong arguments can always be weakened.
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Isn't there enough chance of finding a weak argument to at least make it worth trying? You never know, you might find a weak argument somewhere.
Obviously one can find any number of weak arguments for anything, but surely the point here was to find weak arguments that have a particular sort of problem but are otherwise at least reasonably credible-sounding.
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I'm having trouble understanding what part of what I wrote looked like "there's no chance of finding a suitable argument, so it's not worth trying". For the avoidance of doubt, that wasn't at all what I meant.
Would any of the (at least four) people who have upvoted Eliezer's comment but not my response -- or Eliezer, if he happens still to be reading -- like to explain to me in what way Eliezer is right and I'm wrong here? Thanks!
Generally speaking, there are fewer upvotes later in a thread, since fewer people read that far. If the children to your comment have more karma then your comment, it's reasonable to assume that people saw both comments and chose to up vote theirs, but if a parent to your comment has more karma, you can't really draw any inference from that at all.
Except that when I made my comment, Eliezer's was at zero. Er, it might have been +1, but it certainly wasn't +4.
There's not necessarily even one of those, let alone four. Four people could have upvoted both of you and then four other people could have downvoted just you.
D'oh! Of course you're right. I should have said: either upvoted Eliezer's comment but not mine, or downvoted mine but not Eliezer's.