Yeah. I have just been metaphorically bloodying my forehead trying to explain to someone that if A says “X”, B says “oh, you cherry-picked that example, so it’s a bad argument”, A says “no I didn’t, it’s from Y” and B replies “oh, you just picked Y at random, so it’s a bad argument”, then B has done something stupid no matter what the argument is about—and this has been impossible to get across. It felt very like arguing with a creationist. (It was similar in unlikelihood of minds being changed—one person is British, one is American and the argument was about gun control—so it was pretty much epistemic sewer diving.)
tl;dr LessWrong has made me significantly less tolerant of run-of-the-mill weapons-grade stupidity. (That should be an oxymoron, but somehow doesn’t seem to be one in practice.)
Yeah. I have just been metaphorically bloodying my forehead trying to explain to someone that if A says “X”, B says “oh, you cherry-picked that example, so it’s a bad argument”, A says “no I didn’t, it’s from Y” and B replies “oh, you just picked Y at random, so it’s a bad argument”, then B has done something stupid no matter what the argument is about—and this has been impossible to get across. It felt very like arguing with a creationist. (It was similar in unlikelihood of minds being changed—one person is British, one is American and the argument was about gun control—so it was pretty much epistemic sewer diving.)
tl;dr LessWrong has made me significantly less tolerant of run-of-the-mill weapons-grade stupidity. (That should be an oxymoron, but somehow doesn’t seem to be one in practice.)