Polymeron comments on Dark Side Epistemology - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (110)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Polymeron 04 February 2014 07:55:31PM 1 point [-]

No, and argument from authority can be a useful heuristic in certain cases, but at least you'd want to take away the one or two arguments you found most compelling and check them out later. In that sense, this is borderline.

Usually, however, this tactic is employed by people who are just looking for an excuse to flee into the warm embrace of an unassailable authority, often after scores of arguments they made were easily refuted. It is a mistake to give a low value to p(my position is mistaken | 10 arguments I have made have been refuted to my satisfaction in short order).