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Eugine_Nier comments on Personal Evidence - Superstitions as Rational Beliefs - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: OrphanWilde 22 March 2013 05:24PM

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Comment author: maia 23 March 2013 02:37:03AM 5 points [-]

Interestingly, my father, a moderately respected scientist, has cited similar reasoning to me when discussing why he believes in supernatural phenomena. He believes he has encountered overwhelmingly convincing evidence, but says he understands that I shouldn't necessarily believe him. This is... a pleasant way to deal with disagreement, if not faultless reasoning.

After reading your thread with gwern, I think you and he are probably wrong about this reasoning in general, and you are probably wrong in your case specifically.

I think it should be possible to encounter supernatural phenomena in such a way that it is extremely convincing to you and not to anyone else. If you were a highly rational agent who encountered real supernatural phenomena, and told (even perfectly rational) people about it, their first reaction would be not to believe you. And this likely makes sense on their part unless you're able to produce extremely good evidence that (you are highly rational AND you are very unlikely to be lying), OR you have reproducible evidence of a particular phenomenon that you can show them.

But you should be able to produce such evidence... if it's not convincing to them, why is it convincing to you?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 23 March 2013 11:35:57PM 2 points [-]

But you should be able to produce such evidence... if it's not convincing to them, why is it convincing to you?

Because they don't have enough evidence of your rationality.

Comment author: maia 24 March 2013 05:24:41PM 0 points [-]

Then why can't you produce that instead? If you don't have any outside-view evidence of your rationality, why do you believe you are rational?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 24 March 2013 11:08:33PM 2 points [-]

Most people in the world believe in the supernatural. What's your outside view argument that it is they and not you who are irrational?