All of Motasaurus's Comments + Replies

Guvf qbrfa'g jbex. Fvapr yngre ba jr yrnea gung lbh pna'g fraq nal vasbezngvba onpx zber guna 6uef, vg frrzf zber yvxryl gung Qhzoyrqber jnf hfvat gur pybnx gb genvy Uneel sbe gur ragver qnl (naq nyzbfg pregnvayl ba gur genva, naq creuncf rira va qvntba nyyrl).

Juvpu zrnaf gung qhzoyrqber, va gur pybnx, jngpurq uneel, va gur pybnx, uryc uneel orsber ur tbg gur pybnx naq xarj ur unq gb tb onpx 6uef gb rafher gung uneel tbg gur pybnx 5uef rneyvre.

I can think of clear examples where a particular ideological foundation allows for death to be good, without requiring a contrarian or meta-contrarian position. One thought along such lines is whether religion would fall into the contrarian, or meta-contrarian view.

If you ask most 5 year olds, they believe in the metaphysical.

So could a triad be religious/atheist/religious? Or is there an extra level, where the first kind of atheist is the fedora tipping teenager on reddit, then there be a meta-meta atheist, or would perhaps the meta-meta position be agnostic?

Is religion too complex for such an simplification?

what is more important is the hard work of closely examining every assumption and every logical step.

I agree. This was merely an introduction.

It reminds me somehow of the way many Christians talk a lot about humility but in practice are extremely arrogant towards non-believers.

I would assign a fairly high probability that this is more annoying to me than to you.

Note: Sorry for slow replies. I am working in a different city this week and have limited time and access. The problems of life I'm afraid.

If you're using perspective in a different sense, then you're making a different point that I'm not currently following.

I am using the same sense of perspective that you are. I was saying that until actually experienced, the suffering of being hit by a car exists only in the mind of A. It is potential, but not real. B has no concept - or at best no ability to truly imagine - the suffering that wou... (read more)

within A's limits, imposing the lesser suffering is the maximally loving option that A has.

This is not so as defined. Suffering is not from the perspective of the one inflicting or reducing it, but from the perspective of the one whom experiences it. A cannot be loving by imposing a lesser suffering from A's perspective - it has to be from the perspective of B.

And from the perspective of B it is not a case of a little suffering now to avoid a potential greater suffering later but suffering now, or no suffering now.

If you would like to update o... (read more)

I feel like you're doing a lot of inquiring as to my position without giving me even a rough idea of your own. Which is a little frustrating, fyi.

I do apologise for the frustration this state of affairs brings. It's not for nothing though, I don't want to be in a position to be accused of dictating the conversation. If I just came in with "we will speak about [x] in such a way that we are forced into a paradigm as defined by [y]" it would be unfair to you, and to anyone reading.

I am trying to minimise this by giving you the power... (read more)

What do you think IS the crux of the discussion?

The axioms that build up to the logical conclusion. I think that what you said there logically follows if the statements that precede it are true.

if you can reduce someone's suffering and don't, you're not loving them as much as you could.

If you are happy doing so I would like to focus on this statement first. My selfish reasons are that it is the easiest for me to discuss and on account of being in the middle of the chain directly influences the statements that come before and after it.

If... (read more)

Thank you for your definition.

There exists emotional pain

I am content taking this as a given.

much of which does not have enough redeeming side effects to make it preferable over the option of not experiencing it.

I am not sure this works as a statement of fact. Do you think we could try and come to some kind of agreement on a quantitative amount that does not have redeeming side effects? Or better still, how much of a redeeming side effect makes experiencing pain preferable to not experiencing it?

A loving being would seek to reduce that pain

Why? What... (read more)

Why doesn’t this seem to you like a model grounded in empirical evidence?

Aristotle never tested it - never even wrote of the possibility of testing the model. Post-hoc reasoning is not science. It's inventing plausible (to the time) sounding explanations for observations, and then just leaving it at that.

Which is why Aristotle (or any Aristotlean naturalist) never climbed up a cliff and dropped two balls - one made of lead the other of wood.

do you remember where he says this?

In Physica - I have missed a part there which I apologise for. Only objects which are made of earth fall toward the noble position of earth - as is their want to be with their own in their own noble position. Things made of air will seek out the heavens (which is why smoke rises), things made of water will seek out water (which is why rivers flow into the sea), and things made of fire will seek out fire. For Aristotle, heavy objects contained more of the element earth - so naturally they moved quickest to reach their natural position.

It's from his argument of natural motions.

I am content having the discussion here. I do think this is the appropriate space.

I was hoping that you would be able to posit a specific definition, as opposed to a general boiling down to. One of the difficulties with this is that without a defining example what we are actually discussing may become confused with the examples.

The reason I asked if you would be willing to offer the statement is so that I wouldn't seem to be railroading you into a discussion in my favour. I have an example of such a statement, but I worry that by proposing it the def... (read more)

Can you explain how the story of Elijah widely changed the entire philosophical culture of the world into which it occurred, resulting in an evidence and testing based approach to natural philosophy?

If my memory serves - and I admit it may not, and I have not looked this up, the Israelites returned to the worship of Baal and the Canaanite gods soon thereafter.

Motivated reasoning is so obvious and blatant when it concerns beliefs we don't share ourselves.

Isn't it just. If only the OP had prefaced everything with some kind of comment acknowledging that.

what follows is a descriptive narrative of my epistemology not a statement of universal fact (though some facts are contained therein).

I'm ok with being proselytized

I am not convinced the moderators would be okay with you being proselytized.

Thinking about this and about your question though I have considered ways that we could tangentially discuss it. Would you mind offering a definitive statement on the problem of pain that we could discuss from?

I would rather not discuss from assumptions.

I'm not sure exactly what you were hoping for in response to your introduction but I hoped my experience might be interesting to you.

I wasn't hoping for anything. I had expectations that I had assigned prior probabilities to, and could have happily continued on reading without ever mentioning anything of my epistemology. To my mind that was not the rational approach - and the guidelines that are offered are to lay your underlying assumptions bare for discussion so that people can avoid straw-manning one another. This is what I have done.

There is... (read more)

Yeah I wrote that as about my 3rd comment.

The reaction to which is the inspiration for an introduction post in the first place.

I don't have one that I think is rationally valid that would not come across as proselytizing.

It's not too bad. Like most countries it has its own particular problems.

Funny how we find all kinds of ways to avoid facing uncomfortable questions head on!

Is this prescriptive or descriptive? I did eventually make my way to answer your question head on. You asked me where does your imagination fail and my answer is that my imagination fails on imagining and internally consistent universe that is not internally consistent.

Notice which of those worlds you instantly flinch away from.

I instantly flinch away from neither. I spent approximately fifteen of my first twenty years imagining myself in a world where I was mistaken i... (read more)

Aristotle used empirical evidence to inform his models

Aristotle claimed heavy objects fell to the ground because they loved the noble positions and wanted to be close to it. He also said that heavy objects would fall faster.

The story of Elijah and the priests of Baal (in which a public experiment is used to falsify one of two mutually exclusive models, implying consistency as the first criterion for truth and correspondence with evidence as the second)

Are you claiming that the God of Elijah is different to Christ?

Have you done this?

Not a cliff, but every child who has graduated highschool in my country has done this experiment from the top of a multi-story building.

I have no way of being able to answer this.

It is not, but that is just what you would expect someone you distrust to say. I am new (been reading no more than three months) to this website, and you can check my first post.

But that is in no way convincing to someone who has decided that this is a rewrite from something years back.

Thank you for your corrections. I always appreciate anyone who is willing to help me become a better writer.

However, I think it's worth pointing out that there are pre-Christian elements which had an important part to play too.

For logic and reason you absolutely have a point. For science I don't think that the impact was much greater than giving formal logic and a mathematical basis. They lacked not only the investigative spirit that science requires, but the ability to reason that they should investigate.

For a simple example, the earliest heli... (read more)

A standard Eliezer question: can you imagine the universe exactly the same in all observable aspects, but without anything divine in it? If not, where does your imagination fail?

I have clicked "reply" straight away, but let me ponder the question for five minutes by the clock first.

You question is inherently flawed. It is not a failure of imagination but rather a requirement of imagination that keeps me from imagining the universe exactly the same in all observable aspects, but without anything divine in it.

Are you familiar with Aquinas' ... (read more)

Yes.

Thank you for the corrections. They have been made.

Are you saying that you don't believe there is any amount of evidence that can sway you?

I do not believe that there is any amount of evidence that can sway me regarding the godhood and resurrection of Jesus Christ, no. It is completely and utterly irrational - yet as deeply held has the belief that "I exist" - and I don't believe that there is any amount of evidence that can sway me on that one either.

Of course there is the ultimate test of both - so I suppose that in that case it w... (read more)

It seems a bit self-serving to vote your comment up, since it's you saying you don't hate what I wrote.

But I appreciate that you engaged with it instead of dismissing it out of hand. Not that I really expected anyone on a site dedicated to improving rationality to be dismissing posts out of hand... but without evidence you never can be sure.

/edit

It seems my initial thoughts were somewhat realised.

Hi Senarin.

I am also new to Less Wrong and also a Christian. I didn't write an introductory post - I guess I'm not "less wrong" enough yet (I didn't actually want to comment at all, having felt I haven't lurked enough). I don't think that there is any conflict between rationality and Christianity - and the writer of the gospel of John certainly didn't believe there to be.

For in the beginning was rationality. And rationality was with God and was God... and rationality became flesh and the world knew Him not.

I wonder if the desire to justify is the result of social stigma surrounding being the wrong sort of person. If to be a full person is to have reasons for your actions, and to be nice to others, then it makes sense to me that the desire to give reasons for "mean" criticism is a result of wearing the correct model of personhood.

I think experiments like this are too noisy to provide useful conclusions due to numerous confounders.

Thank you. I think you are right. I did not sit down and think through this idea before proposing it. Such an experiment would not just be useless, it would probably be worse than useless. I think it would give meaningless data that could easily be confused for meaningful. I appreciate the correction.

So the choice of where to draw the line on free speech includes a play-off between allowing accurate evidence to be presented and preventing bad faith comm

The stuff we keep beneath, then, is disproportionately likely to be the stuff we don’t want other people to see (at least not immediately). Herein lies our fears, our insecurities, our prejudices, and our perversions. It’s going to be things which are more likely to cause disagreement, to make people like us less.

There is a certain type of person who puts all their psycho-emotional prickles and saw-teeth and spikes and off shapes on the outside and wear them like armour. What they present is all the things they dislike about themselves and keep the things... (read more)

Thank you for your response. I don't think you are misunderstanding me. I can't present certain evidence or even write too extensively on this topic (which is in part why I phrased everything as a non-specific question in the first place) as there are two publicly known cases where people in the country I live have ended up facing court for writing in a public forum on the internet - one was sent to prison for being the owner of a revisionist website that was hosted in the U.S.

most convictions appear to be for denying the use of gas chambers or

Thank you :)

Are you saying this is good, is bad, or is happening?

I am saying it is good because it allows experts to focus on their fields. But that I thought that Elizer was pointing out that it can be bad because it doesn't allow for dissemination of those expert ideas to others.

I haven't figured out how to quote yet. I apologise for this fact. I wanted to mention that I found this, potentially throw-away, line insightful.

"The biologists can stop arguing with creationists, and get down to sorting out the details of kin selection or whatever. The creationists can stop having to pedal creationism to the unconvinced and can get together to work out the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution."

This sort of thing is how we get places like WUWT exposing the flaws in the IPCCs methods, models, and media pr... (read more)

I am new to the website. So new that this is my first comment and I didn't even particularly want to sign up. I found it interesting having just come from reading Eleizer's post about 0 and 1 not being probabilities to here I immediately had a question form in my mind.

How certain of a thing do we have to be in order to prescribe that the state be able to end someone's life for their speaking it?

There are several points in this question that require some unpacking. The most prominent being about the state being able to end someone's li... (read more)