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jaime2000 comments on Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: passive_fist 23 November 2013 06:04AM

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Comment author: jaime2000 27 November 2013 10:44:26PM 3 points [-]

I don't think you have to be (certainly I am not,) not to put much credence in Reaction. From the premise that political history is conventionally taught in a biased and flawed manner, it does not follow that Reaction is unbiased or correct.

Of course not; even if you reject the current conventional narrative, it still takes a lot of evidence to pinpoint Reaction as a plausible alternative (nevermind a substantially correct one). But Mathias was basically saying that the models and case studies of monarchy he studied in his history classes provided him with such a high prior probability that monarchy "doesn't work" that he couldn't imagine why anybody could possibly be a monarchist in this day and age. I was arguing that the evidence he received therein might not have been quite as strong as he felt it to be.