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shminux comments on Rationality Quotes Thread March 2015 - Less Wrong
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Scott Adams posted his "My best tweets" collection. About half of them are examples of instrumental rationality in action, and most are worth a laugh. Some of my favorites from the Arguing with Idiots section are in the repiies.
Depends on whether your goal is to convince the person you're talking to, or convince outside observers.
I just hope this is sufficiently selected that people who really do have problems with attacking people don't read this.
If you actually are attacking them, you should still run away. Just for a different reason.
I cannot construct a coherent argument for intelligent design, depending on what you mean by "coherent". I could construct an argument which is grammatically correct and uses lies, but I don't think you meant to count that as "coherent".
What lies are those? What evidence convinced you that they are in fact lies?
(That's how I would start.)
I said that I could construct such an argument. I think you'll agree that I am capable of constructing an argument that uses lies. It does not follow that I think all intelligent design proponents are liars, just that I could not reproduce their arguments without saying things that are (with my own level of knowledge) lies.
(If you really want an irrelevant example of intelligent design proponents lying, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy )
If you have at your disposal an intelligent being who gets to decide the laws of physics and gets to set the initial conditions, then intelligent design is an easy consequence: "God set up the universe in such a way that allowed life to evolve according to His predetermined laws".
If we ever get enough computing power to simulate intelligent life, then those simulations will have been intelligently designed and an argument very similar to the above will be true (an intelligent person wrote a program and set the initial parameters in such a way that intelligence was simulated).
You can write a number of refutations of this argument (life sucks, problem of evil, Occam's razor, etc.), but I'd still say it's coherent.
You probably can if you start with a different set of axioms.
Note that, for example, "God exists" is not a lie but a non-falsifiable proposition.
According to supporters of intelligent design, "intelligent design" implies not using any religious premises. So if you started with that axiom, then you're not really talking about intelligent design after all.
I don't think this is quite right. I think they claim that intelligent design doesn't imply using any religious premises.
~□(x)(Ix⊃Ux) rather than □(x)(Ix⊃~Ux)
In other words, there is nothing inconsistent with a theist (using religious premises) and a directed panspermia proponent (not using any religious permises) both being supporters of intelligent design.
Okay, change it to "their version of intelligent design doesn't use any religious premises" and change my original statement to "I can't construct a coherent argument for their version of intelligent design".
I don't think so, though it's possible to quibble about the definition of "religious premises". Intelligent design necessary implies an intelligent designer who is, basically, a god, regardless of whether it's politically convenient to identify him as such.
Supporters of intelligent design may end up basically having a god as their conclusion, but they won't have it as one of their premises.
And they have to do it that way. If God was one of their premises, teaching it in government schools would be illegal.
I think you're confusing the idea of intelligent design and cultural wars in the US.
The question was whether you can construct "a coherent argument for intelligent design", not whether you would be willing to play political games with your congresscritters and school boards.
No, the question was whether the "rationality quote" makes sense. I offered intelligent design as a counterexample, a case where it doesn't. Telling me that you don't think that what I described is intelligent design is a matter of semantics; its usefulness as a counterexample is not changed depending on whether it's called "intelligent design" or "American politically expedient intelligent-design-flavored product".
And I disagree, I think it does perfectly well.
The quote applies to actual positions, not to politically-based posturing.
The quote basically describes the principle of charity 2.0: you seek to understand the logic of a position foreign to you not just to refute it or to convince the other person, or to construct a compromise. You do it to better understand your own side and any potential fallacies you ordinarily do not see in your own logic.
What if your understanding is "it has no valid logic"?
It's a heuristic, not an automatic rule. Excluding religion and aesthetics, I can't think of any cases where it doesn't work. There are probably some which I just haven't thought of, but there certainly aren't very many.
I mentioned homeopathy above.
You don't have a small natural intuition in your brain saying that homeopathy makes sense? I do, although of course I ignore it.
I don't think that's the same thing as being able to construct a coherent argument.
Better tell that to every book on negotiation ever, I guess.
The human concept of justice is fickle, but nonetheless real. Appeals to it, if done skillfully, can be very advantageous.
Just letting you know that I dislike your repetitive snark.
This seems anti-rational, like a boo-light.