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Mark_Friedenbach comments on That Alien Message - Less Wrong
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I'd say that the primary belief-affecting value of this sort of fiction is to counteract the (common human) tendency to treat incredulity as evidence... the "I can't easily think of how X could possibly be true, therefore X can't be true" syndrome.
Agreed. I like the story, and I frequently point people to it. I just wouldn't hold it up as evidence in an argument, unless the other person was specifically committing the fallacy of anthropomorphizing the speed of thought of a machine intelligence, in which case, yes, this story helps inoculate against the incredulity of alternatives.