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Lumifer comments on A Voting Puzzle, Some Political Science, and a Nerd Failure Mode - Less Wrong
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Comments (180)
No, it is not. It may be false as a matter of your definition of "highly intelligent and rational", but I don't see facts involved here.
It's pretty easy to convincingly demonstrate that that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is not 4. I haven't seen anyone convincingly demonstrate that God (or some god) does not exist.
All those proofs you supposedly saw that pi was not 4 could have been flawed, we have to remember that there are two sides to every story. Besides, it's okay to believe that pi = 4 if it brings you joy.
And frankly, my belief that pi = 4 is irrelevant to my opinion on philosophy; no philosophy paper hinges on what the exact value of pi is. You should evaluate my philosophical work on its own merits, not on your prejudices about people who believe in pi=4.
Proofs? I can just measure myself. If you want to argue that I can't believe the evidence of my own senses, well, then we're getting into quite different territory.
To your opinion maybe, to my opinion about your opinion it's quite relevant :-P
All the great scientists are aware that there is always some error in measurement. With real knowledge comes humility, because the more we know, the more we realize we don't know enough. There are many optical illusions, biases, etc. Your eyes may be telling you that the Sun rotates around Earth, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.
Once you learn more about math and life in general, you will realize that pi is greater than 3. Maybe then you will feel ashamed about what you wrote now. Just have an open mind and keep learning.
PS: My grandfather was fired from university for teaching that pi = 4, and I will not allow you to stain my loving memory of him. He was a good person; much more loving that most of the mathematicians I know, including the assholes that fired him.
(jokingly pattern-matching some religious arguments)
Given that this is an observation straight out of Stats 101, yes, I suppose all the great scientists are aware...
Do note that this error is often quantifiable.
Actually my eyes don't tell me what rotates around what. My eyes tell me that there is a very bright ball moving across the sky.
In any case, are you really arguing that I should accept the opinion of authority over my personal experience (assuming reasonable intelligence on my part)?
It may help to re-read the last line of V_B's comment.
Ah. I applied it only to the last two paragraphs. I may have been hasty about that :-)
(Can you please confirm that this is intended to be satire? That seems to be the intent but I'm unsure because some of the other replies say things more bizarre while evidently intended to be literal.)
Confirmed.
Thanks, I am now free to upvote!
Yes it's satire, and it's telling that you can't tell :-)
Poeslaw, the side dish of champions!
Specifically it says something about wedrifid's understanding (to lack thereof) of other people's positions.
It could also be trolling.
You regularly disbelieve in things without requiring someone to convincingly demonstrate their falsehood, on the basis that there isn't reason to suspect that they're actually true.
Religious conservatism comes down to a number of empirical claims which are either right or wrong, and the fact that we cannot now demonstrate which is correct does not mean that some people are not getting the answer right and some getting it wrong on the basis of the same available evidence.
At best I can concede that if one can redefine "rational" to mean something different to rational then the quote in question can be said to be 'true'. But that isn't how words are supposed to work and such conversation ceases to be relevant.
You have convincingly demonstrated that people can be as intelligent and rational as Lumifer while still believing that a god from a popular mainstream religion exists. Nothing more.
Different people will attach quite different meanings to the word "rational". For example, I don't think the standard LW idea of what "rational" means matches the common mainstream usage.
I am sorry, your rationality is broken :-P I do not believe a god from a popular mainstream religion exists.
You seem to have fallen into the common trap of "Why is she not condemning the enemies from tribe X? She MUST be from tribe X herself!"
No, you're just wrong. That is the extent of what your "have not seen convincing" claim implies. A problem with your "be convinced" algorithm. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that believing wholeheartedly in the specific "Daddy in the sky" fantasy of Yahweh 2.0 is epistemically sane.
No, you are saying something wrong because you are saying something wrong. Most Christians wouldn't make the particular mistake you are making. Basic reasoning failures like this are not a property of Christianity, they are a property of Lumifer's comments in this thread.
Incidentally, most of my tribe is Christian. This includes most of my family and friends and among them some of the people I most respect intellectually. So while I cannot happen to call their epistemic practice rational I still claim offence on their behalf at your equivocation between accusation of specific reasoning failure and accusation of Christianity.
We seem to disagree about that. Naked assertions are not particularly effective arguments.
Ah, well then, of course! :-D
By the way, the "accusation of a specific reasoning failure" is aimed pretty specifically at your heavy-handed implication that I am a Christian.
The claim was not naked until you stripped it of clothing by selectively quoting it out of the context of a paragraph of explanation. Your move is not 'effective' unless aimed at users who approve of disingenuous rhetoric.
I repeat the contradiction of this claim that I spent paragraphs explaining in the previous comment.
It seemed the discussion turned into a spat. I apologize for my role in this transformation and bow out.
A piece of well-intentioned advice: When you're involved in a disagreement, responding to someone's argument with "LOL" or a smiley emoticon signals dismissiveness and borderline hostility. It seemed to me in places that you were actively trying to turn the discussion into a spat. Since it appears that this was not actually your intention, you might reconsider that particular (easily-adjusted, I think) rhetorical tic.
In my usual vocabulary, it does signal dismissiveness, but not hostility. Unrolled, it says "Your point/argument/position does not pass the laugh test, I consider your assertion ridiculous, either reconsider it or provide strong support".
As to smileys in my posts, they are "adjectives" for my own words and usually serve to soften the impact (e.g. explicitly show lack of hostility).
I use “Are you fucking kidding me” for that. (I only feel the need to do that once every couple of years, though.)
That is (for me) a considerably stronger version which would generally imply that I consider the poster beyond the hope of redemption and am about to get medieval on his ass :-D
Sometimes interaction strategies are not mutually beneficial. In such cases non-engagement is a practical and all to often neglected option. Wise move.