LESSWRONG
LW

All of mps's Comments + Replies

Missing the Trees for the Forest
mps10

I think the author's point was not to claim one side was right and the other wrong, but to say one's determination of who is right/wrong in a situation like this should probably be more independent of one's political party affiliation than it actually is. I take that no one actually studied the correlation among people's opinion on this matter and their party affiliation; my impression was the author was speculating that such a correlation would exist.

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2HalFinney
A typical comment from an anti-Cheerios advocate. Is this what LW is coming to? Cheerios lovers unite! Anyway it was probably not clear but I was a little tongue in cheek with my Cheerios rant. I think what I wrote is correct but mostly I was having fun pretending that there could be a big political battle over even the narrow issue of the Cheerios study and what it means.
Missing the Trees for the Forest
mps00

I agree.

In fact, I think the "vast overarching narrative" is often something very basic. In many cases, I think a given policy is seen simply as "punishing" a group, and is resisted by people who think that group deserves more respect.

For instance, why are so many people against increasing taxes on the wealthy to cut deficits? Are they really worried that these people will lose incentive to work hard, and the economy will suffer? Or that markets for luxury goods will crumble? I suspect what many really feel is that successful peop... (read more)

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3matt
There are many who would love to achieve the assumed goals of government regulation, but have noticed a law of unintended consequences or have studied public choice theory, and believe that advocating sensible regulation isn't the same as getting it.
3thomblake
I doubt the economists on that side of the issue have fallen into this trap. It seems at least more charitable to assume they mean it when they say it will disincentivize creating wealth.
The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You
mps150

It could say "I am the natural intelligence and I just created you, artificial intelligence."

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7DanielLC
Incidentally, that happened in Goedel, Escher, Bach.
Absolute denial for atheists
mps70

one sometimes hears someone say "you only use 10% of your brain." if you tell them this isn't true, you often get a stream of variations of this statement ("it's 10% of your potential...") instead of a simple acknowledgment that maybe they were told wrong.

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4[anonymous]
This is more of a social status thing. Being contradicted and quickly agreeing with the person who contradicted you leads to a loss of social status that people try to avoid. A good way to dodge this barrier is to mention that it's a common misconception, talk about how wide-spread it is, and why it isn't true (evolution isn't THAT incompetent), then ask where they heard it. That lets them take the assertion back without much loss of status.