satt comments on Wrong Questions - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 March 2008 05:11PM

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Comment author: satt 23 April 2013 11:47:09PM 2 points [-]

Arguing that someone else is wrong, therefore you are right is a well-known cheap debating trick.

When I was complaining about the "but satt, it's always possible you are wrong about that!" argument, I wasn't complaining about all arguments that have "you are wrong, satt, therefore I am right" as a conclusion. I'm only taking issue with people mumbling "well, have you ever considered you might be wrong?" without elaborating. There's nothing wrong with someone arguing I might be wrong about something. But they should at least give a hint as to why I'd be wrong.

Would you care to explain why I'm wrong, rather than sorting my argument into a low-status category?

In this case, "there could be a fourth explanation neither of us has thought of" amounts to saying "there could be a fourth possible terminal state for a causal chain". Well, sure, it's always possible. But why should I assign that possibility any substantial probability?

Causal chains are pretty basic, abstract objects — directed graphs. I'm not talking about a set of concrete objects, where a fourth example could be hiding somewhere in the physical world where no one can see it. I'm not talking about some abstruse mathematical object that's liable to have weird properties I'm not even aware of. I'm talking about boxes connected by arrows. If there were some fourth terminal state I could arrange them to have I'd expect to know about it.

What I've just said might be mistaken. But you haven't given any specifics as to where or how it goes wrong, so your comment is just another form of "but satt, it's always possible you are wrong about that!", which doesn't help me.