michael_vassar3 comments on Zombies! Zombies? - Less Wrong

47 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2008 09:55AM

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Comment author: michael_vassar3 04 April 2008 07:38:28PM 2 points [-]

If the above comment doesn't clarify it, I think that our basic problem here is still that we don't know how to properly use Aumann Agreement without falling into Majoritarianism. No-one would, after thinking through the arguments, take seriously zombies, or it seems to me most recent claims of eminent philosophers, without an argument from authority behind them, but given the argument from authority its natural to try to strengthen the argument with "he could have meant" claims or simply accept it as "profound". Because some people who we call "great philosophers" or "great scientists" actually made fairly subtle, surprising and sound arguments in the past, we may be too quick to transfer the credit that they earned to those who are currently called the same, or we may not be, but majoritarianism and Pascal's Wager seem to be the two hardest stumbling blocks that our attempts at Overcoming Bias have turned up and I think that we may need to get back to them.