The reason I was asking for debugged brains was I already experienced similar negative reception to my posts here. I was hoping to find at least a few guys here that are REALLY free of fallacies, so they would take my request just for what it is, not for what they interpret or assume it is.
So to me this notion of finding folks “free of fallacies” sounds a bit strange since a fallacy is not something a person has and instead it’s a way of describing an action as failing to satisfy the requirements of some purpose. “Fallacy” is most often used in this sense surrounding failures of (modal) logic, that is reasoning that fails to satisfy the rules of modal logic, so someone’s reasoning may be said to be “free of fallacies” but not their person.
But—Isn’t this kind of judgement a negative authority fallacy?
I think this gets into other territory, which is that fallacies exist mostly within the confines of modal logic only, yet modal logic is insufficient to completely explain reality as we find it, and in fact one of the core ideas of LW is that traditional rationality, with modal logic and failure to adhere to it as traditional rationality’s spearhead, is inadequate because it often ignores useful evidence. Hence LW-style rationality takes a more nuanced stance in that fallacies are often only fallacies of logic and may actually be expressions of correct probability updates. That is, although some fallacy would disqualify you from saying something is “wrong” or “right” because it would invalidate the logic, it may instead be an expression of a valid probability update as a result of new evidence. Or not. Fallacies are somewhat correlated with correct probabilistic reasoning but not perfectly so (although probabilistic reasoning has its own set of fallacies not recognized within the fallacies of modal logic).
Sorry for the lack of links on this; it’s stuff that’s covered in the Sequences, but where exactly I’m not sure. I’ll gladly strong upvote a reply to this comment linking to relevant material on these points.
Sorry for the lack of links on this; it’s stuff that’s covered in the Sequences, but where exactly I’m not sure. I’ll gladly strong upvote a reply to this comment linking to relevant material on these points.
I don’t think it’s in single posts? Like, there’s the Robin Hanson post The Fallacy Fallacy, or JGWeissman’s Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy, but those are mostly about “here are specific issues with focusing on fallacies” as opposed to “and also here’s how Bayesian epistemology works instead.” If I were to point to a single post, it might be Science Isn’t Strict Enough, which of course is about science instead of about logic, and is doing the “this is how this standard diverges from what seems to be the right standard” argument but in the opposite direction, sort of.
So to me this notion of finding folks “free of fallacies” sounds a bit strange since a fallacy is not something a person has and instead it’s a way of describing an action as failing to satisfy the requirements of some purpose. “Fallacy” is most often used in this sense surrounding failures of (modal) logic, that is reasoning that fails to satisfy the rules of modal logic, so someone’s reasoning may be said to be “free of fallacies” but not their person.
I think this gets into other territory, which is that fallacies exist mostly within the confines of modal logic only, yet modal logic is insufficient to completely explain reality as we find it, and in fact one of the core ideas of LW is that traditional rationality, with modal logic and failure to adhere to it as traditional rationality’s spearhead, is inadequate because it often ignores useful evidence. Hence LW-style rationality takes a more nuanced stance in that fallacies are often only fallacies of logic and may actually be expressions of correct probability updates. That is, although some fallacy would disqualify you from saying something is “wrong” or “right” because it would invalidate the logic, it may instead be an expression of a valid probability update as a result of new evidence. Or not. Fallacies are somewhat correlated with correct probabilistic reasoning but not perfectly so (although probabilistic reasoning has its own set of fallacies not recognized within the fallacies of modal logic).
Sorry for the lack of links on this; it’s stuff that’s covered in the Sequences, but where exactly I’m not sure. I’ll gladly strong upvote a reply to this comment linking to relevant material on these points.
I don’t think it’s in single posts? Like, there’s the Robin Hanson post The Fallacy Fallacy, or JGWeissman’s Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy, but those are mostly about “here are specific issues with focusing on fallacies” as opposed to “and also here’s how Bayesian epistemology works instead.” If I were to point to a single post, it might be Science Isn’t Strict Enough, which of course is about science instead of about logic, and is doing the “this is how this standard diverges from what seems to be the right standard” argument but in the opposite direction, sort of.