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Lumifer comments on Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Clarity 27 June 2016 01:46AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 28 June 2016 08:56:15PM 9 points [-]

Being a believer in X inherently means, for a rationalist, that you think there are no good arguments against X.

Huh? You are proposing a very stark, black-and-white, all-or-nothing position. Recall that for a rationalist a belief has a probability associated with it. It doesn't have to be anywhere near 1. Moreover, a rationalist can "believe" (say, with probability > 90%) something against which good arguments exist. It just so happens that the arguments pro are better and more numerous than the arguments con. That does not mean that the arguments con are not good or do not exist.

And, of course, you should not think yourself omniscient. One of the benefits of steelmanning is that it acquaints you with the counterarguments. Would you know what they are if you didn't look?