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mwengler comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - LessWrong
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Reading through this and most of the comments, it occurs to me that virtually all the discussion is around MORAL argument. Do we ever succumb to the worst argument in the world in non-moral issues?
"How can we fix this light bulb?" "Use a hammer. A hammer is a tool and tool's fix things."
There it seems like an incomplete argument. And then somebody comes along and nails a few pieces of wood together with a hammer producing something stable enough to stand upon, and then proceeds to stand on it to reach the lightbulb, which just turned out to be loose so they tighten it, fixing it.
Staying out of the moral sphere, what is the worst argument in the world? Some of the first bad arguments that come to mind are 1) Because it's in the bible, 2) God said so, 3) My professor said so, (and to a much lesser extent) 4) Because Feynman said so.
I might vote for "Because X said so" as the worst argument in the world. For moral and non-moral questions, actually.
"Rapture of the nerds".
I'm confused about how to interpret your comment. Do you mean that people saying "Singularitarianism has some of the features of belief in a religious apocalypse, and believers in apocalypses are crazy, therefore Singularitarianism is crazy" is an instance of the worst argument in the world, or something else?
Yes.
Yes although there is a lesser form of that which is the claim that some aspects of singularitarianism (such as a bias I perceive towards predicting the singularity will come in your lifetime) are motivated by the same irrational cognitive whateverisms as religious apocalypse. (I don't expect the singularity to have as much importance or be as likely to occur as most LWs seem to)
You're worried about bugs in this system. Bugs can be caught by unit tests. Therefore we'll add unit tests and you can stop worrying.
In fact, I am worried about the sort of bugs unit test won't catch.
Also lots of pseudoscience.
But modern drugs are poisonous is the most common one, as well as anytime anybody says 'communism' ever these days.