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ike comments on The Hostile Arguer - LessWrong
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How do you deal with Professor Quirrel's version of the argument? It seems basically correct to me that people who are mostly rational will manage to learn from their experience things which the young would not guess. Do you think that the risk you're being lied to about their experience is what justifies ignoring this argument? I think that's often true, but not always. Perhaps the best answer is that people who are rational enough to justify your trusting their word over known arguments do not generally exist?
My point was that you already know their age; and have presumably considered that, and still disagree. It's not new information. (By the way, can you clarify the exact conversation you're referencing? I don't remember off-hand.)
I view this retort as an admission that the evidence I can access is against them. I've even been told explicitly that they don't expect me to agree with them.
There are two possibilities. Either they are wrong, or they are right, and I shouldn't agree.
To the extent the experience claim was true, I would take it into account without them mentioning it. The easiest counter is to look at whether everyone of their age and similar enough life story agrees with them.
That makes sense.
I don't remember the context of the conversation, but his argument was roughly that while stupid irrational adults might fail to learn from experience smart and rational adults still do benefit from it.