I'm not sure what you mean by that, but if you mean that you think the original article killed my mind... then I invite you to show me some evidence for that.

You read a perfectly clear and frankly rather tediously overexplained article and apparently find it murky and ambiguous. More, you think there's a hidden political agenda in a piece about fictional politics in which the author went to some length to state that both sides are guilty of motivated reasoning, which would make it a failure as a political hit piece if it named any names.

Read it again. Read the title first. Everything in the article is in support of the title. It is, in fact, extremely boring in its tedious repetition of the same basic principle, over and over again, and it is in fact quite balanced in its attacks on both parties. If it helps, imagine it's talking about, say, communist-era Chinese atrocities against some of their modern holdings.

My post on the other hand addresses what you are writing and asks for the evidence that you have for your beliefs. That's a standard rhetorical move. Engaging in it is no signal for being mindkilled.

No, but suggesting I am "influenced by tribal motivations" while asking for evidence is. You're mixing an insult with a request for information; you've already decided I am wrong.

As for evidence, it is provided by the exceptionally poor quality of the criticisms. Fighting the hypothetical, fighting the hypothetical, fighting the hypothetical, suspicion of hidden purpose, a claim that an article whose title is its thesis statement has no thesis statement, and another suspicion of hidden purpose. There are real criticisms to be made, and their absence is quite conspicuous given the strongly negative tone of the commentary.

So, there are two possibilities. One is that casebash has simply written a tedious and overextended article out of mere incompetence. That's certainly possible. Another is that the article is tedious and overextended because it is in fact trying to do something else besides arguing for the very obvious thesis contained in its title.

Personally, I suspect casebash might be Russian, and that's why it is written this way.

What other thing might it be doing? Well, the conflict it describes seems like it pattern-matches tolerably well to various hot-button issues of exactly the sort that people sometimes try to approach obliquely in the hope of not pushing people's buttons too hard. Hence the conjecture, made by more than one reader, that there was some somewhat-hidden purpose.

Given that it's a parable describing a common fault mode of human political interactions, it could easily be pattern-matched onto a dozen different situations. Indeed, pretty much any situation in which there are historical grievances; I doubt there's a European country around to which one side or the other could not apply.

Great example. The vast majority of Germans that I've met or read about do not classify themselves as responsible for the wrongs of their country. Acknowledging that the leaders and the country was in the wrong is not the same as acknowledging that the current group is the same entity and members are responsible for the wrongs.

How do you solve interpersonal problems when neither sides can see themselves as the one in fault?

I've had a a fight with my sister regarding my birthday present. She bought me - boosted with a contribution of my mom and dad - a bunch of clothes. I naturally got mad because: 1. it's a large investment for an unsafe return (my disappointment) 2. I always hated getting clothes for my birthday and the trend haven't changed. I always just asked for money instead.

It has caused a little bit of bitterness. I understand her point of view, which was to make me happy on my birthday but I still can't excuse the invalidity of the function she was using, especially considering that I previously mentioned that I hate clothes for birthday.

What should I do in order to ease the situation? Also, do you think that my reaction was inappropriate?

I talked about this with other people and what people said was 'it's the intention that matters' and that sounds like an excuse (and at this point I'm curious if I actually am looking for criticism or just subconsciously hoping I'll get a bunch of chocolate frogs) so get the best criticism you can give.

I can't even begin to model myself as "liking" smoking

Then for the "smoking lesion" problem to be any use to you, you need to perform a sort of mental translation in which it isn't about smoking but about some other (perhaps imaginary) activity that you do enjoy but is associated with harmful outcomes. Maybe it's eating chocolate and the harmful outcome is diabetes. Maybe it's having lots of sex and the harmful outcome is syphilis. Maybe it's spending all your time sitting alone and reading and the harmful outcome is heart disease. The important thing is to keep the structure of the thing the same: doing X is associated with bad outcome Y, it turns out (perhaps surprisingly) that this is not because X causes Y but because some other thing causes both X and Y, you find yourself very much wanting to do X, so now what do you do?

The answer is complex

• First of all, the creation of people is a complex moral decision. Whether you espouse average utilitarianism or total utilitarianism or whatever other decision theory, if you ask someone "Would you press a button that would create a person", they'd normally be HESITANT, no matter whether you said it would be a very happy person or a moderately happy person. We tend to think of creating people as a big deal, that brings a big responsibility.

• Secondly, my average utilitarianism is about the satisfaction of preferences, not happiness. This may seem a nitpick, though.

• Thirdly, I can't help but notice that you're using the example of the creation of a world that in reality would increase average utility, even as you're using a hypothetical that states that in that particular case it would decrease average utility. This feels as a scenario designed to confuse the moral intuition into giving the wrong answer.

So using the current reality instead (rather than the one where people are 9x happier): Would I choose to create another universe happier than this one? In general, yes. Would I choose to create another universe, half as happy as this one? I general, no, not unless there's some additional value that the presence of that universe would provide to us, enough so that it would make up for the loss in average utility.

This is perfectly true. But it doesn't much matter, because the point here is that when these people reject the idea of evolution, for these kind of reasons, they use feelings of "absurdity" as a metric - without critically assessing the reasons why they feel that way.

The point here isnt that the lady was using sound and rational reasoning skills. The contention is that her style of reasoning was something a rationalist shouldn't want to use - and that it was something the author no longer wants to use in their own thinking.

I think many people find evolution "unbelievable" in the way that many scientists found the idea of continental drift unbelievable even after there was a lot of evidence for it (the physical shape of the continents, the types of fossils found in certain areas, and so on.) That is, the effect (that these continents are thousands of miles apart) just seems too big, and in a similar way, living things just seem too far apart overall.

If you set that aside, people could have come up with the idea of evolution just by thinking carefully what happens when you make a series of imperfect copies, about the fact the reproduction of living things is in fact a case of making an imperfect copy, and about the kinds of patterns that living things fall into. But in fact pretty much no one suggested the theory until there was a lot more evidence than that.

I think the original poster would have agreed to this even before they had the realisation. The point here is that, even when you do listen to an explanation, the absurdity bias can still mislead you.

The lady in the story had an entire conversation about evolution and still rejected it as absurd. Some ideas simply take more than 20 minutes to digest, understand and learn about. Therfore after 20 minutes of conversation, you cannot reasonably conclude that you've heard everything there is. You cannot reasonably conclude that you wouldn't be convinced by more evidence.

It's just like any bias really. Even when you know about it and you think you've adjusted sufficiently, you probably haven't.