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Thrasymachus comments on Eliezer's Sequences and Mainstream Academia - Less Wrong Discussion

99 Post author: lukeprog 15 September 2012 12:32AM

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Comment author: Thrasymachus 24 September 2012 09:19:17PM 2 points [-]

I should update slightly towards that direction, yes, but I have to note that the poll you gave me are not just about people who study the issue, but people who also seem to have made a career out of discussing it, and therefore (I would cynically suggest) perhaps wouldn't like the discussion to be definitively over.

Sure, but I gather there are other things you can discuss in decision theory besides Newcomb's problem, so it isn't like the decision theorists need an artificial controversy about this to keep their jobs.

There are dissimilarities between decision theorists and (say) theologians, priests etc. Decision theorists are unlikely to have prior convictions about decision theory before starting to study it, unlike folks who discuss religion. The relevant domain expert in 'Does God exist' would likely be philosophers of religion, although there is a similar selection effect. However, for what it's worth, I doubt atheist philosophers of religion would consider the LW case for atheism remotely creditable.