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Clippy comments on The elephant in the room, AMA - Less Wrong Discussion

22 Post author: calcsam 12 May 2011 02:59PM

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Comment author: Clippy 12 May 2011 04:37:40PM *  15 points [-]

I do not object to the subject of your question, but the way you put it.

I differ in that I do object to the subject of User:wedrifid's question, in particular, the part you just excerpted.

If being B1 refuses to update to being B2's beliefs on account of B2 being stupid, and this judgment of B2's stupidity, in turn, is solely based on B2 satisfying B1 =/= B2, then B1 is "begging the question" (assuming a conclusion to prove it).

There are very good arguments to reject religious beliefs; however, when one uses the argument that an exponent of one of them is stupid because they so believe and therefore must not be worth listening to, then one has desensitized one's worldmodel to evidence, locking in any errors one current subscribes to -- and this remains true even if B2 is pure error.

No belief system or decision theory can be judged solely relative to itself; otherwise, it would be impossible to change one's beliefs or decision theory. Because the fact that one possesses a belief system is not definitive evidence of its truth, any belief system must permit situations in which it would update, or else it will indefinitely reproduce the same errors under reflection.

User:wedrifid makes the error in this statement, no matter how well its phrasing is changed to accord with human customs and status systems:

You are clearly not capable of thinking rationally with respect to a fundamental belief where evidence makes the question overdetermined.