You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

SilasBarta comments on HP:MOR and the Radio Fallacy - Less Wrong Discussion

22 Post author: RichardChappell 21 July 2012 07:55PM

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

Comments (57)

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

Comment author: SilasBarta 21 July 2012 09:39:03PM 13 points [-]

It's not valid as a deductive argument, but it is Bayesian evidence in favour ...

You can say that about pretty much anything labeled a "fallacy".

For example, the "appeal to authority fallacy" --> yes, an authority on the matter is not guaranteed to be right, but their opinion is Bayesian evidence in favor of such beliefs.

Fortunately, a poster already wrote an article with that thesis.

Comment author: Xachariah 22 July 2012 04:48:49AM *  4 points [-]

I disagree that Kaj_Sotala's post applies. Just because you label something a fallacy doesn't make it a fallacy. Googling the "radio fallacy" turns up this thread and nothing else related.

This 'radio fallacy argument' wants to place Harry's argument into the reference class of 'fallacies' and has nothing but a clever label and bad analogy as that basis.

Comment author: SilasBarta 23 July 2012 03:55:17PM 2 points [-]

I agree (I think), but I was mainly applying the Kaj_Sotala article to the quoted part of endoself's post, not so much RichardChappell's argument, since the quoted part is such a common occurrence.

Comment author: randallsquared 24 July 2012 03:43:50AM 1 point [-]

Can you point out why the analogy is bad?