quinsie comments on Dark Side Epistemology - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 October 2008 11:55PM

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Comment author: quinsie 29 September 2011 09:59:40PM 23 points [-]

One method I've seen no mention of is distraction from the essence of an argument with pointless pedantry. The classical form is something along the lines of "My opponent used X as an example of Y. As an expert in X, which my opponent is not, I can assure you that X is not an example of Y. My opponent clearly has no idea how Y works and everything he says about it is wrong." which only holds true of X and Y are in the same domain of knowledge.

A good example: Eliezer said in the first paragraph that a geologist could tell a pebble from the beach from a driveway. As a geologist, I know that most geologists, myself included, honestly couldn't tell the difference. Most pebbles found in concrete, driveways and so forth are taken from rivers and beaches, so a pebble that looks like a beach pebble wouldn't be suprising to find in someone's driveway. That doesn't mean that Eliezer's point is wrong, since he could have just as easily said "a pebble from a mountaintop" or "a pebble from under the ocean" and the actual content of this post wouldn't have changed a bit.

In a more general sense, this an example of assuming an excessively convenient world to fight the enemy arguments in, but I think this specific form bears pointing out, since it's a bit less obvious than most objections of that sort.