= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Peterdjones comments on Eliezer's Sequences and Mainstream Academia - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (153)
They may overlap. Are they bad points?
The pertinent point is that all informed opinion considers it decisiley answered. That is not the case with the two issues you cited as having been decisevly answered by EY.
They're insufficient for me. Other people may find them sufficient.
So, according to you, it seems I shouldn't pronounce something decisively answered unless "all informed opinion" considers it decisively answered.
Don't you see the paradox in this? How is the first person to consider it 'decisively answered' supposed to call it 'decisively answered', if he/she must first wait for all other people to call it 'decisively answered' first?
No they needn't. They only need wait for the point to be reached where an overwhelming majority agree with an answer. Having noted that , they can correctly state that it has been decisevely answered. They only need others to agree with the anwer, not for others to agree that the question has been decisvely answered.
I don't think that "decisively answered" need have anything to do with democracy -- for example I'm sure that if you poll Czech scientists about the existence of God, you'll get a different distribution than if you ask Iranian scientists. Even if they're equally informed, political considerations will make them voice different things.
The policy you suggest seems designed to minimize conflict with your academic peers, not designed to maximize effectiveness in the pursuit of understanding the universe.
Churchill said democracy was the worst system apart from all the others. Do you have an alternative way of establishing Deciiveness that improves on the Majority of Informed Opinion?
Neither of those subsets would get me the majority of informed opinion. I believe I have already solved that problem.
Churchill's exact quote was "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" He was talking about forms of government, not methods of understanding the universe.
As a sidenote, let me note here that even on the issue you argued about, this "majority" seems to actually exist. The majority of philosophers are compatibilists, according to Thrasymachus's linked poll above.
And there seems to be an > 80% percentage (an overwhelming majority) against libertarian free will. According to your own argument then, even if you don't find compabilism a "decisive answer", you should find libertarianism a "decisive failure of an answer".
But getting back to your question: "Do you have an alternative way of establishing Deciiveness that improves on the Majority of Informed Opinion?"
Well, even if we don't speak about things like "Science" or "Testing" or "Occam's Razor properly utilized", I think I'll prefer the "Majority of Informed Opinion that Also Has IQ > 130 And Also One-Boxes in Newcomb's Dilemma".
I was only drawing a loose analogy.
Then Hobbes decisively solved it, not EY. OTOH, if you are talking about EY's specific form of compatibilism.. then he has no majority on his side.
Why is it an improvment to make it parochial? Can't you see that it trivialises the claim "EY has decisevely solved FW" to add the rider "..by the LW/EY definition of decisivness". I could also claim to have solved it by my definition. Parochialism devalues the currency.
Downvoted, because I never made that claim, and nobody has made that claim. I said FW/determinism has been solved, I didn't present EY as the originator of compatibilism, any more than I would have assigned the invention of atheism to him.
I may have tapped out, but don't you dare make this into an opportunity to misrepresent me. I will still disavow any false statement you assign to me. I'm very territorial about what I have actually said, vs what people attempt to falsely assign to me.
Do you think there is any novelty to EY's compatibilism?