DSimon comments on Love and Rationality: Less Wrongers on OKCupid - LessWrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (329)
Well, what can I reply to this? About some things, we don't have any hard-scientific conclusions available, so one has to go by the evidence from personal experience and the findings of other people willing to discuss theirs. This is one such topic, which means that unfortunately, I cannot support my claim by giving a link to Arxiv or Pubmed.
On the other hand, if I wrote a whole essay detailing the evidence I have for my claim, it would still be open to all kinds of objections, which in fact might well be valid, since this is not a topic that allows for a self-contained verbal argument that would provide airtight support for its conclusions. Especially considering that these questions tend to arouse ideological passions, which make it difficult for people to tell apart positive claims about what the real world is like, versus normative claims about what an ideal world should be like.
Therefore, I will let these assertions hinge purely on my own credibility. It's an honest opinion based on a huge amount of observation, thinking, and discussion, which you're welcome to accept or reject. (Though, again, I would advise any man that rejecting it is a bad idea.)
(Also, judging from the sneering way you refer to "PUAs" -- a group of people with not very well defined boundaries, but to which I don't belong by any reasonable definition -- it does seem like instinctive antipathy is making you unable to fairly evaluate some important pieces of insight commonly associated with this milieu. In the interest of improving the accuracy of your own view of the world, it would be good for you to discard this bias. That's my honest opinion, at least.)
If I follow, I don't think this is justifiable. It seems that you're saying that you don't want to talk about your arguments in detail because they might end up partially failing, or because you don't think your audience would be able to fairly evaluate them. Even if either or both of these issues are present, the presence of the actual argument still offers a better chance of understanding being imparted than its absence.
I'm willing to accept expert credibility as a proxy for a strong argument when time is limited, but not as a substitute for that argument. Furthermore, I think it's reasonable to assign reduced credibility to an expert that is not willing to provide their argument when asked!