All of candid_theist's Comments + Replies

That was more addressed to anyone who happens to look in my Drafts folder before I'm done writing it.

My instinct was to ignore this reply, but I recently read a suggestion that among sufficiently rational people there is never simply a need to agree to disagree. Do you folks on this site have some sort of standard disclaimer that questions are grounded in curiosity, and are not meant to belittle anyone's experience or opinion? In any case, I'm just curious. These questions are directed to Cyan and/or Normal Anomaly and/or anyone else with a similar reaction.

Suppose that within a given domain of knowledge, Alice can create concepts that Bob can understa... (read more)

0Normal_Anomaly
Disclaimer: Any discussion of XFrequentist's model in this comment is not necessarily how XFrequentist thinks of it, but rather my variant on it. The community norm is that questions are grounded in curiosity. I've never seen anyone take offense at an honestly asked question. My interpretation (assuming this all takes place within one subject area) is that: * Yes iff Alice can generate concepts Carol cannot understand, * No, * No, * Probably, but not necessarily (see bullet 1). If we are talking about Immutable Levels, a concept beyond my reach is one that I will never understand no matter how much I study or how well it is explained to me. I cannot name any concepts I've encountered that seem to be beyond my reach in this sense, except maybe General Relativity. That one could just be a lack of math background. If we are talking about Mutable Levels, a concept beyond my reach is one that I could not learn without further study of background material.

...and the concepts generated by someone two levels above you are beyond reach.

Interesting, but this second part isn't mentioned in the original post. And the added constraint makes the whole system seem less likely to be useful to me, never mind mathematical rigor. YMMV, I suppose.

0Normal_Anomaly
My mileage does vary. I took the added constraint as implied, and I think it makes the whole system more useful.
0Cyan
An oversight -- I'll see if I can get XFrequentist to add it in.

This can just as well be "X did happen, but the mainstream has been convinced it did not." The theory that an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed near Roswell, New Mexico comes to mind.

Or creationism can be seen as a combination: "Genesis 1-2 (X1) literally happened, but the atheist scientists invented evolution (X2) and tricked people into believing it."

Level is obviously antireflexive. It is a tautology that I will never generate an idea I am incapable of generating.

And of course it's probabilistic in nature anyhow - on occasion I generate ideas my friend couldn't, and he can on occasion generate ideas I couldn't.

Manfred points out that this level concept may not be antisymmetric. Others have pointed out that level may depend on the topic of expertise. For that matter, I'll claim that the concept of level can be applied to artistic pursuits like music, painting, and dancing, not just rational purs... (read more)

0Cyan
Reminder: my original idea was ...and the concepts generated by someone two levels above you are beyond reach.

Right. I for one happen to believe the theory that al Qaeda conspired to execute deadly attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. That is literally a conspiracy theory. Is the process by which I came to believe that relevant to the discussion here? (If yes, I'd be happy to give more information.)

But the phrase "conspiracy theory" commonly implies (like the faked moon landing) that relatively few people believe it, generally because the evidence against the theory is fairly convincing. (Conspiracists may answer that additional evidence is not available or widely known to the public.)

7gjm
What's distinctive about "conspiracy theories" is generally not so much the alleged conspiracy to do whatever-it-is but the conspiracy to hide their having done it. And, usually, the fact that it would have to be an exceptionally effective conspiracy, because keeping such things secret is often difficult.

I assume Systems 1 and 2 here refer to this Elephant and Rider article.

I suspect this is one of those things where both ways are true. I do believe that at least to some extent, social skills are hard-wired into human brains, and spending too much conscious thought on social actions can actually impede them.

For a bit of anecdotal evidence, I fairly often experience difficulty finding the "right" moments to insert a comment into a conversation among several people. But at other times, in a very similar conversation I can easily join in the conve... (read more)