Robin_Hanson2 comments on The Modesty Argument - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2006 09:42PM

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Comment author: Robin_Hanson2 15 December 2006 08:49:01PM 2 points [-]

Eliezer, you describe cases of dreamers vs folks awake, of super-intelligences vs schizophrenics who think they are God, of creationists vs. their opponents, and of a Verizon customer vs customer support, all as cases where it can be very reasonably obvious to one side that the other side is completely wrong. The question of course is what exactly identifies such cases, so that you can tell if you are in such a situation at any given moment.

Clearly, people having the mere impression that they are in such a situation is a very unreliable indicator. So if not such an impression, what exactly does justify each of these exemplars in thinking they are obviously right?

It seems to me that even if we grant the possibility of such cases, we must admit that people are far too quick to assume that they are in such cases. So until we can find a reason to think we succumb to this problem less than others, we should try to invoke this explanation less often than we were initially inclined too.