Nornagest comments on Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (203)
The fact of an otherwise unexceptional objection is only evidence against an idea when you get more objections than you'd expect an arbitrary true idea in its reference class to get. Ideas touching on political or identity issues, for example, can be expected to garner a certain proportion of objections merely from tribal effects, with no particular implications for truth value.
The content of objections is a different matter and pretty much has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Parsing content carries costs, however, and so there are situations when it's not going to be worth your time -- as for example when it comes from a source with a known history of trolling or poor-quality reasoning, or with known-bad axioms.