I’m again years late to the party, but there’s a couple things here that I want to respond to:
It seems to me a strawman only from the religious perspective.
If I read between the lines, you seem to be suggesting “It’s not a strawman if you don’t take religious beliefs seriously. Non-believers have no obligation to care whether their critique-of-religion accurately represents the thing being critiqued.” If I’m misreading you, please tell me. But if that is your position, it’s *exactly opposite* the spirit of epistemic generosity that this article is trying to advocate, and that LessWrong overall shows such a strong commitment to. Rigorous debate means representing the opposing view as strongly and faithfully as possible, *especially* when you think it’s idiotic. You don’t earn the right to strawman someone’s claims (nor say that it’s only a strawman “from their perspective”) just because you find their belief system harmful and abhorrent.
Which points to a fun irony: this is an article about how people avoid their beliefs’ real weak points. My comment calls out what I see as Yudkowsky taking a low blow, departing from his admirably high argumentative standards, by importing a capability (eg mass teleportation, or everyone-simultaneously-dropping-dead-by-miracle) that religious sources don’t set precedent for, even though I agree with the broader point about God having more humane options and allegedly acting in ways that break my suspension of disbelief. Your response essentially amounts to: “It’s fine to be sloppy when criticizing religion because believers are sloppy too.” But that’s *exactly* the kind of motivated reasoning the article is warning against, just applied in the anti-religion direction. The article’s lesson is that epistemic honesty requires applying rigorous scrutiny to your own beliefs and arguments at least as much as you apply it to views you disagree with.
I’ll also note that my original comment wasn’t making “the morality angle.” I wasn’t defending God’s alleged behavior, honestly, he sounds like kind of a jerk. I was saying the criticism itself is sloppy on its own terms. Those are very different claims. Conflating them makes it harder to have the kind of honest, careful conversation that this site was built for.
I’m again years late to the party, but there’s a couple things here that I want to respond to:
If I read between the lines, you seem to be suggesting “It’s not a strawman if you don’t take religious beliefs seriously. Non-believers have no obligation to care whether their critique-of-religion accurately represents the thing being critiqued.” If I’m misreading you, please tell me. But if that is your position, it’s *exactly opposite* the spirit of epistemic generosity that this article is trying to advocate, and that LessWrong overall shows such a strong commitment to. Rigorous debate means representing the opposing view as strongly and faithfully as possible, *especially* when you think it’s idiotic. You don’t earn the right to strawman someone’s claims (nor say that it’s only a strawman “from their perspective”) just because you find their belief system harmful and abhorrent.
Which points to a fun irony: this is an article about how people avoid their beliefs’ real weak points. My comment calls out what I see as Yudkowsky taking a low blow, departing from his admirably high argumentative standards, by importing a capability (eg mass teleportation, or everyone-simultaneously-dropping-dead-by-miracle) that religious sources don’t set precedent for, even though I agree with the broader point about God having more humane options and allegedly acting in ways that break my suspension of disbelief. Your response essentially amounts to: “It’s fine to be sloppy when criticizing religion because believers are sloppy too.” But that’s *exactly* the kind of motivated reasoning the article is warning against, just applied in the anti-religion direction. The article’s lesson is that epistemic honesty requires applying rigorous scrutiny to your own beliefs and arguments at least as much as you apply it to views you disagree with.
I’ll also note that my original comment wasn’t making “the morality angle.” I wasn’t defending God’s alleged behavior, honestly, he sounds like kind of a jerk. I was saying the criticism itself is sloppy on its own terms. Those are very different claims. Conflating them makes it harder to have the kind of honest, careful conversation that this site was built for.