shminux comments on Why I'm Skeptical About Unproven Causes (And You Should Be Too) - Less Wrong

31 Post author: peter_hurford 29 July 2013 09:09AM

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

Comments (102)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: shminux 29 July 2013 04:46:44PM *  45 points [-]

This post had an odd effect on me. I agreed with almost everything in it, as it matches my own logic and intuitions. Then I realized that I strongly disliked the logic in your anti-meat post, because it appeared so severely biased toward a predefined conclusion "eating meat is ethically bad". So, given the common authorship, I must face the possibility that the quality of the two posts is not significantly different, and it's my personal biases which make me think that it is. As a result, I am now slightly more inclined to consider the anti-meat arguments seriously and slightly less inclined to agree with the arguments from this post, even though the foggy future and the lack of feedback arguments make a lot of sense.

EDIT: Hmm, whatever shall I do with 1 Eliezer point and 1 Luke point...

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 July 2013 05:13:14PM 21 points [-]

+1 for correct, evenhanded use of the genetic heuristic (what we call the genetic fallacy when we agree with its usage).

Comment author: [deleted] 30 July 2013 01:11:55PM 4 points [-]

what we call the genetic fallacy when we agree with its usage

I was about to ask whether you actually meant to say “disagree”, then I noticed that English has an ambiguity with predicative nominals over the object in relative clauses I hadn't noticed before. :-/

Comment author: BloodyShrimp 30 July 2013 07:35:29PM 2 points [-]

I'm having trouble parsing the version with "agree" to anything simultaneously non-tautologous (i.e. when we use a name, we generally agree with our own usage) and reasonable; what reading did you notice?

Comment author: [deleted] 31 July 2013 09:35:14AM *  9 points [-]

My first reading: ‘We call the genetic heuristic “the genetic fallacy” when we agree with its usage.’

The intended reading: ‘We call the genetic fallacy “the genetic heuristic” when we agree with its usage.’

Comment author: FeepingCreature 17 August 2013 04:34:35AM *  1 point [-]

To switch your brain back and forth, read it with emphasis on "fallacy" for the wrong reading, emphasis on "call" for the intended reading. (at least for me)

Comment author: lukeprog 11 January 2014 10:10:56PM 1 point [-]

Another example here.

Comment author: lukeprog 29 July 2013 06:10:25PM 10 points [-]

+1 for sharing your cognitive process in detail.