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.

Manfred comments on Open thread, August 4 - 10, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: polymathwannabe 04 August 2014 12:20PM

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

Comments (307)

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

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 04 August 2014 01:55:32PM *  9 points [-]

Oblique request made without any explanation: can anyone provide examples of beliefs that are incontrovertibly incorrect, but which intelligent people will nonetheless arrive at quite reasonably through armchair-theorising?

I am trying to think up non-politicised, non-controversial examples, yet every one I come up with is a reliable flame-war magnet.

ETA: I am trying to reason about disputes where on the one hand you have an intelligent, thoughtful person who has very expertly reasoned themselves into a naive but understandable position p, and on the other hand, you have an individual who possesses a body of knowledge that makes a strong case for the naivety of p.

What kind of ps exist, and do they have common characteristics? All I can come up with are politically controversial ps, but I'm starting my search from a politically-controversial starting point. The motivating example for this line of reasoning is so controversial that I'm not touching it with a shitty-stick.

Comment author: Manfred 04 August 2014 11:17:58PM *  4 points [-]

Downwind faster than the wind. See seven pages of posts here for examples of people getting it wrong.

Kant was famously wrong when he claimed that space had to be flat.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 August 2014 02:00:11PM 2 points [-]

Kant was famously wrong when he claimed that space had to be flat.

As discussed previously, this exact claim seems suspiciously absent from the first Critique.

Comment author: Manfred 06 August 2014 12:10:23AM 2 points [-]

Take, for example, the proposition: "Two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and with these alone no figure is possible," and try to deduce it from the conception of a straight line and the number two; or take the proposition: "It is possible to construct a figure with three straight lines," and endeavour, in like manner, to deduce it from the mere conception of a straight line and the number three. All your endeavours are in vain, and you find yourself forced to have recourse to intuition, as, in fact, geometry always does.

Geometry, nevertheless, advances steadily and securely in the province of pure a priori cognitions, without needing to ask from philosophy any certificate as to the pure and legitimate origin of its fundamental conception of space.

I agree that Kant doesn't seem to have ever considered non-euclidean geometry, and thus can't really be said to be making an argument that space is flat. If we could drop an explanation of general relativity, he'd probably come to terms with it. On the other hand, he just assumes that two straight lines can only intersect once, and that this describes space, which seems pretty much what he was accused of.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 August 2014 10:46:19AM *  1 point [-]

On the other hand, he just assumes that two straight lines can only intersect once, and that this describes space,

I don't see this in the quoted passage. He's trying to illustrate the nature of propositions in geometry, and doesn't appear to be arguing that the parallel postulate is universally true. "Take, for example," is not exactly assertive.

Also, have a care: those two paragraphs are not consecutive in the Critique.