Tyrrell_McAllister2 comments on Thanksgiving Prayer - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 November 2008 04:17AM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister2 28 November 2008 10:13:53AM 0 points [-]

Maybe it was the categorical nature of "no danger whatsoever" that led to the comparisons to religion. Given the difficulty of predicting anyone's psychological development, and given that you yourself say that you've seen multiple lapses before, what rational reason could you have for such complete confidence? Of course, it's true that there are things besides religion that cause people to make predictions with probability 1 (which, you must concede, is a plausible reading of "no danger whatsoever"). But, in human affairs, with our present state of knowledge, can such predictions ever be entirely reasonable?