Vaniver comments on Qualitatively Confused - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2008 05:01PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 30 March 2013 10:33:26PM 2 points [-]

If you presented both sides of an issue, concluding the other side was right, how would you then conclude your side is the winner?

If they are sub-issues for a main issue (like the policy impacts of a large decision), one might expect things to go the other way sometimes. "Supporters claim that minimum wages give laborers a stronger bargaining position at the cost of increased unemployment, which may actually raise the total wages going to a particularly defined group. This is possibly true, but doesn't seem strong enough to overcome the efficiency objections as well as the work experience objections."

Comment author: gwern 02 April 2013 03:50:28PM 0 points [-]

'Possibly true' is not agreeing. If you conceded the sub-issue without changing your side, then the sub-issue must have been tangential and not definitive. In a conjunctive counterargument, I can concede some or almost all of the conjuncts and agree, without agreeing on the conclusion - and so anyone looking at my disagreements will note how odd it is that I always conclude I am currently correct...

Comment author: Rixie 02 April 2013 04:33:10PM *  -2 points [-]

Well, theology isn't science. If you do an experiment and the result goes against your hypothesis, your hypothosis is false, period. It's not necissarily like that when people are arguing with logic instead of experiments. No one on either side would make an argument that wasn't logically correct. I've read both Christian and Atheist material that make a lot of sense sense, although I realize now that I should probably review them because that was before I discovered Less Wrong. There are also plenty of intelligent people who have looked at all the evidence and gone both ways.

There is something very wrong here, from a rationalist's point of view.

Are there people here that have gone from Christianity to Atheism or the other way around? Or for any other religion? Can I talk to you?

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 04 May 2013 05:06:00PM 4 points [-]

There is something very wrong here, from a rationalist's point of view.

Seems to me the wrong thing is exactly that experiments are not allowed in the debate. Leaving out the voice of reality, all we are left with are the voices of humans. And humans are well known liars.

Comment author: CCC 04 May 2013 07:39:53PM -2 points [-]

The trouble with trying to run experiments to prove the existence of God is that it's very, very difficult to catch out a reclusive omniscient being.