Konkvistador comments on 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

78 Post author: Yvain 22 November 2013 09:26AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 23 November 2013 02:16:15PM *  13 points [-]

I was confused by what was meant with supernatural. I mean if you believe you live in a simulation of course things that are not constrained by the physical laws of our universe might occasionally show up in it. Preferred the ontologically basic mental entity formulation of previous polls.

Comment author: Kawoomba 23 November 2013 02:51:43PM *  5 points [-]

Indeed, these vague questions that are meant to supposedly "capture the intuition" may have their uses, but not in this community. Instead, the vagueness just pollutes the interpretability of the results: For example, "anything which can be described at some level becomes a part of the natural laws just by including that definition, ergo nothing supernatural can exist" maps true beliebers and staunch Hitchensites to the same answer. Another thus ensuing problem: "There are parts about you which cannot be changed" can translate to "... under any conceivable circumstances" or to "given a typical life trajectory". Both are different questions with different intuitions.