Ben_Jones comments on But There's Still A Chance, Right? - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 January 2008 01:56AM

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Comment author: Ben_Jones 06 January 2008 12:52:45PM 0 points [-]

James,

I agree that there's a difference between rhetoric and pure maths. However, you can change models, you can revise probabilities, update beliefs and argue the toss all day, but it doesn't make humans and chimps any less related, any more than you can argue the grass red. It's a good example about Kelvin's model of the sun. However, for it to be applicable, please tell us the chance that some future discovery will demonstrate that the similarities between human and chimp genomes are just a coincidence. See Eliezer's reference to 19th vs 21st century in the post.

The statement 'there's still a chance, right?' is mathematically valid in pretty much every case. The statement 'humans are genetically related to chimps' is rhetoric, and not any sort of Technical Argument in and of itself. However, I know which of these two has more relevance and meaning for me.