Vaniver comments on Rationality Quotes Thread December 2015 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: elharo 02 December 2015 11:28AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 31 December 2015 08:16:38PM 0 points [-]

And why the reference class "Western"?

Presumably, Wiblin is talking about Western bombing of ISIS in Syria. If one finds that Turkish interventions have been effective and American interventions haven't, say, then that's an argument that Americans shouldn't intervene now (but Turks should).

Comment author: RichardKennaway 01 January 2016 01:54:18PM 0 points [-]

Presumably, Wiblin is talking about Western bombing of ISIS in Syria. If one finds that Turkish interventions have been effective and American interventions haven't, say, then that's an argument that Americans shouldn't intervene now (but Turks should).

Choose your reference class, get the result you want. Is Turkey "Western" or not? It wants to join the EU (but hasn't been admitted yet). Russia is bombing Syria. Why exclude it from the class of foreign interventions? For that matter, I don't know what military actions, if any, Turkey has taken in Syria, but that would also be a foreign intervention.

Not to mention the the smallness of N in the proposed study and the elastic assessment.

I googled some of the phrases in the OP but only got hits to the OP. Is this even a quote?