All of Sophivorus's Comments + Replies

"Vegan" has a fairly clear definition and Google got it quite right. It's about not treating animals like property. Not eating meat is just a consequence of being vegan. Vatgrown meat is vegan, in fact many the people behind SuperMeat are vegans.

Good point, yet the meaning of "dialectics" has changed a lot through the centuries, and on Wikipedia it currently is "a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments" which quite fits the function of the algorithm.

But how would you call it?

0ChristianKl
The first step would be to research whether there is prior art. "Refutation tree" might be a description that gives a better impression of what it does. The algorithm doesn't care whether or not the arguments are "reasoned" it cares about whether they have counterarguments. It's also not clear that the statements have a truth value to begin with. Appeals about what should be done, are value judgments. The example claims are also ill-defined. It starts with the question of whether everybody should be vegan and later people make arguments based on them defending that people should eat little meat. Motte-and-bailey is in full effect.
0RowanE
I accept that meat is more environmentally damaging per calorie (or similar such measures), and with the scale of the meat and dairy industry I'd accept saying it has a huge effect on the environment, but there are several steps between that and "if humanity doesn't go vegan soon, we will probably go extinct".
9ChristianKl
That a far-out claim and you provide no argument to back it up. It looks like you don't estimate the size of the involved effects.
2NatashaRostova
My utility from eating meat is b(X=1) My utility from the world not being destroyed is Y So... Utility = X + E[Y|X=1] vs. Utility = E[Y| X=0] Obviously you're able to disagree with my model. But in my self-consistent model of the world the benefit I get from eating meat is greater than the utility I achieve from lowering the likelihood the world is destroyed (in any given timeframe) by not eating meat. I strongly suspect you will have a hard time convincing me I'm wrong without appealing to moral imperatives. Obviously there isn't some mathematically elegant and clearly distinct line between rationality and moral imperative, but hey, if there was Less Wrong probably wouldn't exist.

The Wikidebate project has some wisdom on how to avoid that, and the fact that the algorithm is run on a wiki ensures that repeated, misguided or otherwise useless arguments are removed or improved. Also, coming up with arguments where there are none is pretty difficult, and stupid ones are much easier to delete than to write down.

1ChristianKl
That sounds to me like you have never spoken with people who are skilled at debate. It might be difficult for the average person but there are plenty of people who can debate well and argue nearly any point.

I made such a site but I wasn't good at spreading it, so in the end I closed it and moved the project to Wikiversity and called it Wikidebate :-)

Didn't know about Arguman, there are some nice discussions going on there. However, I see at least two key differences between the projects. First, Wikidebate is designed so that arguments are not signed and can therefore be improved upon by others. Second, arguments in Arguman are painted red or green depending on if they are in for or against the issue, while on Wikidebate the color depends on wether they are SUSTAINED or REFUTED, which is calculated algorithmically using the dialectic algorithm.

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I just uploaded the evolution of FormalForum: http://ergoforum.org/

Any feedback appreciated!

Hi everyone!

My name is Felipe, from Argentina. I've been studying philosophy for the last five years or so, especially logic and philosophy of science, but this last year I also started learning web programming, and before that I was a very active editor in the spanish Wikipedia.

I learned about Less Wrong because I had just finished an experimental website, and I posted it on the imageboard of science and mathematics /sci/ (which some of you probably know), and there someone mentioned that people on Less Wrong would probably like it. So I came here, and I ... (read more)

0Sophivorus
I just uploaded the evolution of FormalForum: http://ergoforum.org/ Any feedback appreciated!