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ciphergoth comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: palladias 18 July 2013 02:23AM

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Comment author: jkaufman 18 July 2013 07:36:57AM 21 points [-]

A while ago Mitchell Porter wrote that Robin Hanson often makes arguments like:

People claim that they want to be smart and would like to be smarter. But if you stand on your head, blood pools in your brain, providing more oxygen, and thus improving your cognitive function. Yet people spend hardly any time standing on their heads. Does this mean that they don't really want to be smarter?

Quirrel is being even more Hansonion than usual in #95, arguing that other people not trying to raise their friends from the dead means they don't care about their friends.

Comment author: ciphergoth 22 July 2013 09:55:34PM 5 points [-]

Any argument that says "people don't do Y, therefore they don't really want X" is invalid if you can make a similar argument where X is eg "eat food (when hungry)" or "have sex (when, say, a young man)". To say "Young men don't really want to have sex" is to give "really want" a completely alien meaning.

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