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

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (616)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

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.