JoshuaZ comments on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: whpearson 01 May 2013 10:28PM

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

Comments (648)

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

Comment author: JoshuaZ 09 May 2013 05:28:14PM 6 points [-]

In general I don't think it's healthy to believe the opposing viewpoint literally has no case.

Do you think that young earth creationists have no substantial case? What about 9/11 truthers? Belief in astrology? Belief that cancer is a fungus(no I'm not making that one up)? What about anything you'll find here?

The problem is that some hypotheses are wrong, and will be wrong. There are always going to be a lot more wrong hypothesis than right ones. And in many of these cases, there are known cognitive biases which lead to the hypothesis type in question. It may help to again think about the difference between policy issues (shouldn't be one-sided), and factual questions (which once one understands most details, should be).