V_V comments on Ritual 2012: A Moment of Darkness - Less Wrong
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Comments (136)
"Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass."
I don't think so. The existence of a widespread moral prohibition against some uncommon behavior, which is not matched by a claim of immorality of the typical behavior by those who defend the uncommon behavior, is not evidence that the widespread moral prohibition is a "cached belief" (that is, a meme maintaned only due to tradition and intellectual laziness). People in the majority group could well have pondered the uncommon behavior and decided they had good reason to consider it immoral.
Let A(X) = “There are plenty of non X-ers who think it's immoral for anyone to X, whereas there aren't many X-ers who think it's immoral for other people to refuse to X.”
Let B(X) = “People who are non-X-ers usually are because of a cached belief, whereas people who are X-ers usually are because they've thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.”
Are you really saying that log(P(A(X)|B(X))/P(A(X)|¬B(X))) ≤ 0? or do you just mean that while positive it is very small? Because I really can't see how A(X) can be more likely given ¬B(X) than given B(X).
¬B(X) is "People who are non-X-ers rarely are because of a cached belief, or people who are X-ers rarely are because they've thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better."
Why do you think that ¬B(X) would make A(X) any less likely than B(X) would?