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Jiro comments on Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 20 April 2015 12:02AM

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Comment author: Jiro 21 April 2015 04:03:12PM 3 points [-]

I find the idea of "true rejection" over-used. Many people, for many things, have more than one reason to reject them, and none of those reasons is the reason.

can you imagine how much money you would make selling the TV rights to the first ever resurrection of a Pharaoh?

That would only make money because it hasn't been done before. Each successive Pharaoh resurrection would make less money. A question asking what a future civilization would do about a frozen head implies asking what they would do for a typical frozen head. Being one of the first frozen heads they run across is very atypical, and carries a higher profit only because it is atypical.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 22 April 2015 05:40:00PM 4 points [-]

Each successive Pharaoh resurrection would make less money.

It might also cost less money, because most of the cost might be R&D to work out how to resurrect someone, after which resurrecting each person is easy.

Continuing the Egypt analogy, each additional Egyptian artefact is less interesting than the previous one, yet people continued digging them up rather than just digging up the first few.

Comment author: dxu 21 April 2015 11:30:50PM *  2 points [-]

I find the idea of "true rejection" over-used. Many people, for many things, have more than one reason to reject them, and none of those reasons is the reason.

This does not seem psychologically realistic. Humans aren't built to arrive at conclusions through rational evaluation of multiple independent lines of evidence; rather, they choose their answer in advance for some reason or other (usually "this is weird" or "my tribe rejects this"), and only then begin cherry-picking arguments to support their conclusion.

That would only make money because it hasn't been done before. Each successive Pharaoh resurrection would make less money. A question asking what a future civilization would do about a frozen head implies asking what they would do for a typical frozen head. Being one of the first frozen heads they run across is very atypical, and carries a higher profit only because it is atypical.

This is true, but ignores skeptical_lurker's point that any civilization capable of resurrection is likely to be post-scarcity.

Comment author: Jiro 22 April 2015 05:05:06AM *  1 point [-]

This does not seem psychologically realistic. Humans aren't built to arrive at conclusions through rational evaluation of multiple independent lines of evidence

That seems to have an implied "... so every time I argue with a human, I should never assume that the human has more than one reason for something". I hope you can see how that will go seriously wrong when the human actually does have more than one reason, and particularly on LW-style topics.

This is true, but ignores skeptical_lurker's point that any civilization capable of resurrection is likely to be post-scarcity.

If the civilization is post-scarcity, then making money from TV rights to the first Pharaoh is not useful as an analogy; the future civilization never does one thing because it gets them more of something than another thing does.

Comment author: dxu 22 April 2015 02:51:34PM *  2 points [-]

That seems to have an implied "... so every time I argue with a human, I should never assume that the human has more than one reason for something".

Absolute claims are almost never correct. Replace the "never" in your statement with "usually not, especially when discussing politically charged, or better yet, weird-sounding topics" and you've got yourself a deal.

Comment author: Jiro 22 April 2015 03:28:42PM 1 point [-]

You're refusing to address someone's stated argument, and in fact, are saying something that is nonresponsive if he means what he is actually saying.

Yes, sometimes you have to do that. But making it your default behavior when addressing all people in the real world who don't agree with you is a bad idea.

Comment author: dxu 22 April 2015 03:57:09PM *  2 points [-]

But making it your default behavior when addressing all people in the real world who don't agree with you is a bad idea.

Who said anything about making it your default behavior? There's a difference between "many" and "most", and an even bigger difference between "many" and "all".

Comment author: Jiro 22 April 2015 05:44:29PM 0 points [-]

Okay, change that statement to include the word "most".

Making it the default behavior for when addressing most people who don't agree with you is still a bad idea.