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hyporational comments on Only You Can Prevent Your Mind From Getting Killed By Politics - Less Wrong
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Comments (143)
I think this is a very uncharitable interpretation of what the post in question is trying to say. First, the post isn't proposing a litmus test, but a test that is better than theism in identifying irrationality. Second, how would you know if someone changes their beliefs in response to new evidence without assessing their beliefs in relation to shared evidence? There's no way Stuart was stupid enough to think evidence shouldn't be shared for this to work.
ETA: I'm not a native speaker, and I'm not sure how people use the word litmus test anymore.
"Litmus test" in common U.S. usage means a quick and treated-as-reliable proxy indicator for whether a system is in a given state. To treat X as a litmus test for rationality, for example, is to be very confident that a system is rational if the system demonstrates X, and (to a lesser extent) to be very confident that a system is irrational if the system fails to demonstrate X.
This is how I meant it.
That's what I thought first too, but it seems to also have a political meaning.
You mean the test can be completely unreliable, like many political litmus tests probably are?
Yes, I do mean that.
What a sadly disfigured figure of speech. Chemists would disapprove :(
I wonder if there are many more like it.
That's pretty much the same meaning; just read "person or policy" for "system", and "ideologically acceptable" for "in a given state".