tc comments on Expecting Short Inferential Distances - Less Wrong

107 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 October 2007 11:42PM

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

Comments (91)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: tc 23 October 2007 05:20:11AM 9 points [-]

For example, talking as if you think "simpler explanation" is a knockdown argument for evolution (which it is)

I don't quite agree - by itself, X being "simpler" is a reason to increase my subjective belief that X is true (assuming that X is in a field where simplicity generally works) but it's not enough to prove e.g. creationism false. Rather, it is the total lack of evidence for anything supernatural that is the knockdown argument - if I had reason to believe that even one instance of say, ghosts or the effects of prayer were true, then I'd have to think that creationism was possible as well.