I find it is more likely that the times it degenerates into a fight is due to the lack of ability on one of the debaters. The alternative is to believe that people like ourselves are somehow special. It is anecdotal but I used to be incredibly stubborn until i met some good teachers and mentors. Now i think the burden of proof lies on the claim that, despite our apparent similarities, a large portion of humans are incapable of being reasoned with no matter how good the teacher or delivery. Of course i expect some people physically cannot reason due to brain damage or whatever. But these are a far smaller group... (read more)
Yes I feel that you are talking in vague but positive generalities.
First, on a side note, what do you mean by "but positive"? As in idealistic? Excuse my vagueness. I think it comes from trying to cover too much at once. I am going to pick on a fundamental idea i have and see your response because if you update my opinion on this, it will cover much of the other issues you raised.
I wrote a small post (www.wikilogicfoundation.org/351-2/) on what i view as the starting point for building knowledge. In summary it says our only knowledge is that of our thought and the inputs that influence them. It is on a similar... (read more)
Thanks for taking the time to write all that for me. This is exactly the nudge in the right direction i was looking for. I will need at least the next few months to cover all this and all the further Google searches it sends me down. Perfect, thanks again!
Thanks for the links and info. I actually missed this last time around, so cannot comment much more until i get a chance to research Jaynes and read that link.
Who decides on what information is relevant? If i said i want to use men without beards and Alexander never had one, that would be wrong (at least my intuition tells me it would be) as i am needless disregarding information that skews the results. You say use all the info but what about collecting info on items such as a sword or a crown. I feel that is not relevant and i think most would agree. But where to draw the line? Gram_Stone pointed me to the reference class problem which is exactly the issue i face.
From the correct perspective, it is more extraordinary that anyone agrees.
Correct by whose definition? In a consistent reality that is possible to make sense of, one would expect evolved beings to start coming to the same conclusions.
Corrected by whose definition of correct?
From this question i assume you are getting at our inability to know things and the idea that what is correct for one, may not be for another. That is a big discussion but let me say that i premise this on the idea that a true skeptic realizes we can not know anything for sure and that is a great base to start building our knowledge of the world from.... (read more)
I think the probability is close to zero because trying to "drill down" to force agreement between people results in fights, not in agreement.
We are not in agreement here! Do you think its possible to discuss this and have one or both of us change our initial stance or will that attempt merely result in a fight? Note, i am sure it is possible to result in a fight but i do not think its a forgone conclusion. On the contrary, i think most worthwhile points of view were formed by hearing one or more opposing views on the topic.
... (read more)they will each support their own position by reasons which are effective for
Thanks for the suggestion. Added to reading list and commented on the stats site.
Sure, but why will they disagree? If I say there is 60% chance of x and you say no it is more like 70% then i can ask you why you think its 10% more likely. I know many will say "its just a feeling" but what gives that feeling? If you ask enough questions, i am confident one can drill down to the reasoning behind the feeling of discomfort at a given estimate. Another benefit of WL is it should help people get better at recognizing and understanding their subconscious feelings so they can be properly evaluated and corrected. If you do not agree, it would be really interesting to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks
I posted before about an open source decision making web site I am working on called WikiLogic. The site has a 2 minute explanatory animation if you are interested. I wont repeat myself but the tl;dr is that it will follow the Wikipedia model of allowing everyone to collaborate on a giant connected database of arguments where previously established claims can be used as supporting evidence for new claims.
The raw deduction element of it works fine and would be great in a perfect world where such a thing as absolute truths existed, however in reality we normally have to deal with claims that are just the most probable. My program allows opposing... (read 421 more words →)
The issues you raised are interesting but actually make this a pretty good example of my problem - how do you account for weak evidence and assign it a proper likelihood. One way i am testing this is by taking an example which i think is agreed to be 'most likely' (that he existed as opposed to not existing). Then i want to work backwards and see if we there is a method for assessing probability that seems to work well on small scale questions, like probability's of minted coins and give me the expected answer when i add it all together.
At this point i am still trying to work out the objective priors issue. The method either needs to be immediately agreeable by all potential critics or have an open and fair way of arguing over how to formulate the answer. When i work that out i will move to the next stages although no guarantee i keep using the Alexander example.