LESSWRONG
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All of ctuck's Comments + Replies

Mere Messiahs
ctuck20

That kind of reasoning is definitely possible, and maybe in some cases useful.

But I think the inferred story B is much less reliable than an account of B from a reliable source. Usually when people do this type of historical profiling, they treat their inferences of how things "really happened" with the same weight as an eyewitness account. Probably because "Jesus may have possibly been a schizophrenic narcissist but there's no conclusive evidence to support this" doesn't sell as well.

Edit: I'm not sure if I explained myself propperly ... (read more)

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2TheOtherDave
Sure, if I have a reliable source handy, that's optimal. It doesn't happen very often. Even contemporary eyewitness accounts just aren't all that reliable, and only become less so as they are edited and refined and told and retold. Of course, you're right that an arbitrarily selected account from someone who wasn't even a witness is even less reliable. In any case, I haven't read Elst's book, so I don't have a worthwhile opinion about it in particular. That said, I certainly consider "Jesus was a schizophrenic narcissist" more likely than "Jesus was a demigod," based on the relative frequencies of schizophrenic narcissists and demigods in the general population. The question is whether either theory is likely enough to be worth considering in the first place.
Mere Messiahs
ctuck70

I've never really cared for such attempts to psychoanalyze historical figures because it always comes down to conjecture. The Bible is the most extensive (if not the most accurate) documentation of Jesus' life. Aside from that, we know very little about him save for the long reaching effects that his supposed deeds had on human society.

If you don't trust the bible as a valid source that's fine. A lot of people don't. But without it there just isn't enough information on Jesus to try to determine his personality, beliefs, or motives with any certainty.

Even ... (read more)

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8TheOtherDave
This happens all the time in real life. It only sounds silly if you ignore the fact that the writers are a subject one can have knowledge about. If Sam tells me stories about A and B, and I know a lot about A, I can compare Sam's account of A to my knowledge of A to make inferences about the distortions introduced by Sam's narrative, and I can use those inferences to arrive at a different story about B than the one Sam told, which I consider more reliable than the one Sam told, despite my knowing less than Sam does about B.
1Osuniev
beware of spoilers.
0IainM
I think you didn't read the comments closely enough :p
Correspondence Bias
ctuck20

I don't think it's a false consensus at all to ask a question like "Shouldn't we all care about saving the world?".

Taken literally, there can be no consensus to a question. Both the question asker and answerer can share a consensus about the answer to the question, but the question itself has no definitive truth value and therefore cannot be agreed upon (assuming the question does not presume information).

However, even if you assume that the question was hypothetical it's still not a case of false consensus. The hypothetical question would transl... (read more)

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Where to Draw the Boundary?
ctuck30

I think that Public_Heretic and Eielizer are actually having a disagreement about the definition of the word "Category".

If Eliezer says that a Category is "a label applied to a set of words that describe things which are similar", Then he is correct to say that a Category is "Wrong" or "not a proper category" if the words contained in the set do not describe things which are similar.

If Public_Heretic defines a Category as "a label applied to a set of words that describe things", then he is correct in saying... (read more)

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Conservation of Expected Evidence
ctuck20

I agree that T in and of itself is problematic.

Your N seems more likely what the author intended, now that you point it out.

Though I still don't think anyone who thought about it for more than 20 seconds would ever assert that N could be used as evidence for G.

But using that as a model would probably serve well to underscore the point of Conservation of Evidence

If the fact that God has not been revealed directly to humanity is evidence for the existence of God. Then should God ever reveal himself directly to humanity, it would be evidence against his existence.

That's probably the statement Eliezer intended to make.

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3TheOtherDave
(nods) And I would not be in the least surprised to find theologians arguing that the absence of direct evidence of God's existence is itself proof of the existence of God, and I would be somewhat surprised to find that none ever had, but I don't have examples. That said, straw theism is not particularly uncommon on LW; when people want a go-to example of invalid reasoning, belief in god comes readily to hand. It derives from a common cultural presumption of atheism, although there are some theists around.
Conservation of Expected Evidence
ctuck10

Hi, I'm new here but I've been following the sequences in the suggested order up to this point.

I have no problem with the main idea of this article. I say this only so that everyone knows that I'm nitpicking. If you're not interested in nitpicking then just ignore this post.

I don't think that the example given bellow is a very good one to demonstrate the concept of Conservation of Expected Evidence:

If you argue that God, to test humanity's faith, refuses to reveal His existence, then the miracles described in the Bible >must argue against the existen

... (read more)
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1TheOtherDave
I would say, rather, that: G = God exists N = The existence of God is not revealed directly to humanity M = Miracles occur ...and we're talking about P(G|N) and P(G|M) and not talking about P(T) at all. More generally, T seems to be a red herring here. That said, I agree that there's a presumption that M implies ~N... that is, that if miracles occurred, that would constitute the direct revelation of God's existence. And yes, one could argue instead that no, miracles aren't a revelation of God's existence at all, but rather a test of faith. A lot depends here on what counts as a miracle; further discussion along this line would benefit from specificity.