Ishaan comments on Rationality Quotes September 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Vaniver 04 September 2013 05:02AM

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Comment author: Ishaan 14 September 2013 11:27:59PM *  6 points [-]

This is a blatant parody. Probability of pig+chimp hybrids involved in human origins are at pascal-low levels.

It sounds convincing to me

This is worthy of notice. It really shouldn't have been remotely convincing..

Can you identify the factors which caused you to give the statements in this article more credibility than you would have given to any random internet source of an unlikely-sounding claim? Information about what went wrong here might be useful from a rationality-increasing perspective.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 September 2013 09:46:48AM 4 points [-]

Can you identify the factors which caused you to give the statements in this article more credibility than you would have given to any random internet source of an unlikely-sounding claim?

Mostly, the fact that I don't know shit about biology, and the writer uses full, grammatical sentences, cites a few references, anticipates possible counterarguments and responds to them, and more generally doesn't show many of the obvious signs of crackpottery.

Comment author: BIbster 24 September 2013 09:48:22AM 2 points [-]

This is exactly why I (amongst many?) find it so hard to separate the good-stuff from the bad-stuff. It's the way the matter is brought to you, not the matter itself. Very thoughtful way of bringing it, as Army1987 says, references, anticipation of counterarguments etc.