Eugine_Nier comments on Stranger Than History - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 September 2007 06:57PM

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Comment author: Jiro 21 March 2014 04:39:39AM 0 points [-]

I do not believe that the arguments that convinced them to be less religious were rational (and probably weren't even, strictly speaking, arguments).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 March 2014 01:04:10AM 0 points [-]

Then in want sense did you mean "people in 1901 had much lower levels of rationality than people from the 20th century"?

Comment author: Jiro 22 March 2014 01:56:45AM 0 points [-]

Since 1901 is in the 20th century, I think you need to be a bit more charitable and figure out that that's a typo.

Once you correct that, there are two things going on here:

People from 1901 and people from the 21st century aren't the same people. The people from 1901 didn't become people from 2014 and get more rational in the process; they died off and were replaced by different people who were more rational from the start.
Even limiting it to a shorter timespan, people who became rational didn't do so for rational reasons. In fact, they couldn't--it would be logically contradictory. If they became rational for rational reasons they would already be rational.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 March 2014 02:54:41AM 0 points [-]

So what is the basis for your claim that these changes constitute becoming more as opposed to less rational?

Comment author: Jiro comment score below threshold [+] (11 children)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 March 2014 07:10:03PM 2 points [-]

"every interpretation of the Bible by my religion is true"

First, I don't think even most Christians at the time would agree with that as a premise. This about as accurate a caricature as describing someone's position as "every one of my beliefs is true". Second, as I have pointed out repeatedly in this thread even the atheists at the time rejected gay marriage.

but to convince you of that I would have to convince you that the former is a true belief and it's probably impossible for me to do that.

Why are you so convinced that is in fact a true belief since you don't seem able to produce any argument for it?

Comment author: Jiro 23 March 2014 04:56:16AM -2 points [-]

This about as accurate a caricature as describing someone's position as "every one of my beliefs is true"

"such as" means that what follows is an example, not an exhaustive list, and what I said doesn't apply just to that example and to nothing else. If rationality means deriving conclusions logically from premises, then I concede that opposition to gay marriage can be rational, given appropriate premises.

Why are you so convinced that is in fact a true belief since you don't seem able to produce any argument for it?

It's pointless to produce an argument for it. The chance that even with a valid argument I could persuade someone who opposes gay marriage, to support gay marriage, is negligible.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 23 March 2014 12:14:28PM 5 points [-]

The chance that even with a valid argument I could persuade someone who opposes gay marriage, to support gay marriage, is negligible.

The question is not, how would you persuade someone else, but, what persuades you?

Comment author: Lumifer 23 March 2014 07:49:19PM 0 points [-]

even with a valid argument

What would constitute a valid argument in this context?

Comment author: Chrysophylax 23 March 2014 11:57:22PM 1 point [-]

An argument is valid if, given true premises, it always and exclusively produces true conclusions. A valid argument in this context might therefore be "given that we wish to maximise social welfare (A) and that allowing gay marriage increases social welfare (B), we should allow gay marriage (C)". A and B really do imply C. Some people contend that the argument is not sound (that is, that its conclusion is false) because at least one of its premises is not true (reflecting reality); I am not aware of anyone who contends that it is invalid.

Jiro is contending that people who oppose gay marriage do not do so because they have valid arguments for doing so; if we were to refute their arguments they would not change their minds. Xe has argued above that people (as a group) did not stop being anti-homosexuality for rational reasons, i.e. because the state of the evidence changed in important ways or because new valid arguments were brought to bear, but rather for irrational reasons, such as old people dying.

The fact that Jiro considers it rational to believe that gay marriage is a good thing, and thus that people's beliefs are now in better accord with an ideal reasoner's beliefs ("are more rational"), does not contradict Jiro's belief that popular opinion changed for reasons other than those that would affect a Bayesian. Eugine_Nier appears to be conflating two senses of "rational".

As RichardKennaway observes, we ought to ask why Jiro believes that we should allow gay marriage. I suspect the answer will be close to "because it increases social welfare", which seems to be a well-founded claim.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 March 2014 03:42:14PM 2 points [-]

An argument is valid if, given true premises, it always and exclusively produces true conclusions.

We're discussing social and cultural memes, not formal logic.

Do note that "I oppose gay marriage because it goes against God's law" is a valid argument.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 25 March 2014 02:48:19AM 2 points [-]

I suspect the answer will be close to "because it increases social welfare"

Ok, now what's the evidence that this is in fact the case?

continue this thread »

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