MTGandP comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - Less Wrong

48 Post author: peter_hurford 23 July 2013 09:30PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 July 2013 02:27:45AM 6 points [-]

I don't engage in the vast majority of possible activities. Neither do you, so on net, the class of arguments you accept must mitigate against almost all activities, right?

Comment author: MTGandP 24 July 2013 02:37:21AM 2 points [-]

Are you saying that most arguments that you should to X are fully general counterarguments against doing anything other than X?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 July 2013 02:59:59AM 3 points [-]

Why did you type that comment? Did you consider the arguments for typing that comment as fully general counterarguments against all the other possible comments you could have made? If not, why not post them too?

Comment author: MTGandP 24 July 2013 03:07:14AM 5 points [-]

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say. It sounds like you're saying that we make decisions without considering all possible arguments for and against them, in which case I'm not sure what you're saying with regard to my original comment.

To construct the comment that you just replied to, I considered various possible questions that I roughly rated by how effectively they would help me to understand what you're saying, and limited my search due to time constraints. The arguments for posting that comment work as counterarguments against posting any other comment I considered, e.g. it was the best comment I considered. It's not the best possible comment, but it would be a waste of time to search the entirety of comment-space to find the optimal comment.