shminux comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong

6 [deleted] 06 November 2012 10:38PM

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

Comments (898)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: shminux 12 November 2012 08:49:37PM 3 points [-]

And delivering a mathematical proof is surely not what >99% of God's previous statements were doing.

How do you know? People mention "divine inspiration" quite frequently. The point is that the statement is untestable and thus irrelevant, not that it is most likely false.

Comment author: gwern 12 November 2012 10:02:31PM 1 point [-]

I don't think the version with the math proof is meaningless in a probabilistic sense; my point is that the meaning comes from an additional factor unrelated to the dream, and I think Hobbes would agree that in the absence of any additional aspect of God speaking to the dreamer such as prophecies (objectively verifiable, like the proof!) there's no reason to believe him. But these additional aspects are the strange and unusual things which might oblige Hobbes to believe him, not the speech in a dream.