Comment author: wedrifid 10 October 2009 12:45:08AM 5 points [-]

Just exposing the child to words used in their correct context is of significant value. Some of these the child may prompt further curiosity but even those that are ignored have begun to be built into a framework for understanding.

Comment author: MrPineapple 24 January 2011 01:20:55AM -9 points [-]

yes thats why we read the bible ;P lol

In response to Fake Explanations
Comment author: Anonymous_Coward 21 August 2007 12:23:18AM 27 points [-]

Well, one difference between "heat conduction" and "phlogiston" is that the former carries some additional information with it - heat conduction is a well-understood mechanism by which energy is transferred from place to place. Maybe it does apply in that situation and maybe it doesn't - in the example given, it doesn't, there's no heat-conduction mechanism to transfer heat from one side to the other - but the fact that there's actually a mechanism behind the words separates it, qualitatively, from an explanation like "phlogiston." It has equations behind it which can then be written down and tested for agreement with reality.

Really, I can quite understand the students... if you say "I don't know" you have a zero percent chance of getting the explanation right. If you say "that seems impossible," then you're guaranteed to get it 100% wrong - since it DID happen, and thus it must be possible. The best course of action in the situation is to think of all the hypotheses you can, and then guess at one of them - whichever one has the highest chance of being right, given what they know about physics.

Now, I certainly hope that the students wouldn't think that by throwing around guesses they're "doing physics" - yes, doing physics would involve taking actual measurements, and I would hope that after taking some measurements of the block over time they would see "oh, this isn't actually at equilibrium like we had all assumed." (Alternatively, if a student took the words and wrote down an actual model of how the air currents or the different metals or the heat conduction could lead to the observations, that would also be "doing physics", though the only end result of it would be to yield a mathematical model which would quickly be easy to proven false by measurements or stability analysis.) But neither of those avenues is open to them when they walk into a classroom and the teacher asks them to "explain this phenomenon."

I think the students would quite happily agree that they haven't given an explanation which is good by any sane measure - it's quite likely that many of them would also agree that they don't actually believe their explanations. But I wouldn't agree that they're being irrational in stating them.

Comment author: MrPineapple 24 January 2011 01:07:34AM -7 points [-]

"Eh, maybe because of the heat conduction and so?"

should give you at least 1/3 of a point, after all, one side of the plate is hot :)

Comment author: Dpar 11 May 2010 06:36:54AM *  0 points [-]

The author did not mention anything about an exceptionally high percentage of liars in IRC relative to the general population (which would be quite relevant to his statement) therefore there's no reason to believe that such had been HIS experience in the past.

Given that, there is no reason for HIM to presume that the percentage of compulsive liars in IRC would different from the general population. YOUR experiences may, of course, be drastically different, but they are not the subject of discussion here.

DP

Comment author: MrPineapple 24 January 2011 01:03:47AM -5 points [-]

and there's always the prisoners dilemna to consider.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 30 September 2007 08:33:43PM 20 points [-]

"And this is where I fell down as a rationalist. I remembered several occasions where my doctor would completely fail to panic at the report of symptoms that seemed, to me, very alarming. And the Medical Establishment was always right. Every single time. I had chest pains myself, at one point, and the doctor patiently explained to me that I was describing chest muscle pain, not a heart attack. So I said into the IRC channel, "Well, if the paramedics told your friend it was nothing, it must really be nothing - they'd have hauled him off if there was the tiniest chance of serious trouble.""

My own "hold on a second" detector is pinging mildly at that particular bit. Specifically, isn't there a touch of an observer selection effect there? If the docs had been wrong and you ended up dying as a result, you wouldn't have been around to make that deduction, so you're (Well, anyone is) effectively biased to retroactively observe outcomes in which if the doctor did say you're not in a life threatening situation, you're genuinely not?

Or am I way off here?

Comment author: MrPineapple 24 January 2011 01:02:10AM -7 points [-]

i seem to recall a link on another page entitled "hindsight bias".

Comment author: michael_vassar3 11 August 2007 03:31:03AM 6 points [-]

In it's strongest form, not believing system 1 amounts to not believing perceptions, hence not believing in empiricism. This is possibly the oldest of philosophical mistakes, made by Plato, possibly Siddhartha, and probably others even earlier.

Comment author: MrPineapple 24 January 2011 01:01:09AM -7 points [-]

there are always the empirical observation of prior situations that really didnt match the appropriate system 1. to always believe that system 1 is infallible is perhaps contradictory of the system itself.

Comment author: anon2 11 August 2007 01:50:21AM -2 points [-]

It's strange that it sounds like a rationalist is saying that he should have listened to his instincts. A true rationalist should be able to examine all the evidence without having to rely on feelings to make a judgment, or would be able to truly understand the source of his feelings, in which case it's more than just a feeling. The unfortunate thing is that people are more likely to remember the cases when they didn't listen to their feelings which ended up being correct in the end, than all the times when they were wrong.

The "quiet strain in the back of your mind" is what drives some people to always expect the worst to happen, and every so often they are right which reinforces their confidence in their intuitions more than their confidence diminishes each time they are wrong.

In some cases, it might be possible for someone to have a rational response to a stimulus only to think that it is intuition because they don't quite understand or aren't able to fully rationalize the source of the feeling. From my own experiences, it seems that some people don't make a hard enough effort to search for the source... they either don't seem to think that there is a rational source, or don't care to take the effort.... as long as they are able to ascertain what their feelings suggest they do, they really don't seem to care whether or not the source is rational or irrational.

A true rationalist would be able to determine the source and rationality of the feeling. The interesting question is if he fails to rationally explain the feeling, should he ignore the feeling, chalking it up to his weakness as a perfect rationalist.

Since we are all human and cannot be perfectly rational, shouldn't a rationalist decide that a seemingly irrational feeling is just that, irrational. Is it not more rational to believe that a seemingly irrational feeling is the result of our own imperfection as a human?

Comment author: MrPineapple 24 January 2011 12:59:00AM 31 points [-]

a rationalist should acknowledge their irrationality, to do otherwise would be to irrational.

In response to Bayesian Judo
Comment author: MrPineapple 23 January 2011 11:33:19PM 0 points [-]

All you did was show that your argumentative skills were better. His intial belief mentioned souls, and i dont think you ever did. I'd like to see some sort of testability for souls :)

As to your reply of possibly proving his religion false, if he was better at arguing, he may have replied that at the least it might prove his understanding of religion false.

And of course its not as if you have created an AI.