SusanBrennan

Thank you for the clarification, and my apologies to Will. I do have some questions, but writing a full post from the smartphone I am currently using would be tedious. I'll wait until I get to a proper computer.

otherwise you stand a decent chance of ending up in hell.

Comments like this are better for creating atheists, as opposed to converting them.

That's the point.

It's a very different framework from util maximization, but I find it's much more satisfying and useful

And if it wasn't more satisfying and useful, would you still follow it?

Bang on! Brown ("Divided we fall") is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. I regret having only one up-vote to give you.

I remember coming across this paper during my PhD, and it provides a somewhat game theoretic analysis of in-group out-group bias, which is still fairly easy to follow. The paper is mainly about the implications for conflict resolution, as the authors are lecturers in business an law, so it should be of interest to those seeking to improve their rationality (particularly where keeping ones cool in arguments is involved), which is why we are here after all.

I've been thinking about doing my first mainspace post for LessWrong soon. Perhaps I could use it to a... (read more)

Is this the post you were thinking of?

EDIT: Never mind. I'm pretty sure Gwern got the right one.

The placebo effect strikes me as a decent enough explanation.

even Turkey did NOT require some particular ruthlessness to modernize.

Could you explain the meaning of this sentence please. I'm not sure I have grasped it correctly. To me it sounds like that you are saying that there was no ruthlessness involved in Atatürk's modernizing reforms. I assume that's not the case, right?

This is my favorite response so far.

Math can, and in the case of QM, must use infinities and 0-dimensional particles which can not exist in reality.

I'm a little confused by this objection to say the least. Could you express your views on the following topics in mathematics, particularly when they are used for real world applications, whether it be physics, computer science or engineering?

1. The use of the "null vector" in linear algebra

2. Limits approaching 0 in calculus

3. Generalizing the rules of 3 dimensional space to represent 4 dimensional space

4. Complex numbers and their vari

For an intelligent and persuasive person it may be a rational (as in: maximizing their utility, such as status or money) choice to produce fashionable nonsense.

True. I guess it's just that the consequences of such actions can often lead to a large amount of negative utility according to my own utility function, which I like to think of as more universalist than egoist. But people who are selfish, rational and intelligent can, of course, cause severe problems (according to the utility functions of others at least). This, I gather, is fairly well understood. That's probably why those characteristics describe the greater proportion of Hollywood villains.

Scientific progress, economic growth and civilization in general are proportional to the number of intelligent people and inversely proportional to the number of not-so-smart people.

That seems a little bit simplistic. How many problems have been caused by smart people attempting to implement plans which seem theoretically sound, but fail catastrophically in practice? The not-so-smart people are not inclined to come up with such plans in the first place. In my view, the people inclined to cause the greatest problems are the smart ones who are certain th... (read more)

Isn't one of the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorem that there will always be unanswerable questions?

Since this is LessWrong and there's a strong leaning towards a certain view of normative ethics, I had better ask this before I go any further. Would you consider any form of deontology or virtue ethics to be a "decent moral theory"? It feels like I should check this before commenting any further. I know, for example, that at least one person here (not naming names) has openly said that all non-consequentialist approaches to ethics are "insane".

Well, the only time I responded to one such argument, I rejected the second rather than the first premise. Your way might have been easier. I don't think it would have changed the response though.

He wrote the "socrates is man" syllogism right beside it and challenged me to find an example of someone who is immortal (kind of ignoring the fact that it would only prove a premise in that argument false, and not change the logical validity of that particular argument).

You know, maybe the initial argument isn't the worst I've ever seen. Now that I think about it, the response is probably the worst argument I've ever seen.

Thanks. I will have to remember that term in future.

You are quite free to do so, unless you pick the definition of law which is exclusively legal, which is the abuse of language that this argument depends on. If you choose a definition of law under which natural laws or mathematical laws can be counted, then the first premise is indeed false (in a materialist framework anyway).

When you change the definition of law to the legal one, the second premise becomes nonsense.

Regardless of which you pick, any reasoned inference which respects the language involved will generally lead to one premise being true and t... (read more)

This is one argument I find particularly irksome...

All laws are constructed by some intelligence

Natural laws are laws

Therefore, natural laws are constructed by some intelligence.

The annoying part is that it is deductively valid if the definition of law is actually the same in both premises. The person making this argument thinks their argument is watertight because of its structure, and will likely not listen to any suggestion that natural laws are not a component of the laws described in the first premise. I can't understand how anyone can fail to s... (read more)