Couldn’t you greatly increase voter rationality much faster and cheaper by limiting the franchise or encouraging less rational people not to vote?
Jayson_Virissimo
Karma: 7,573
Actually, the part about math class I disliked the most was how devoid of history and theory it was. Most of my math classes in college covered only techniques for solving certain kind of problems. Nowhere did they explain why something is done a certain way or how someone discovered it could be done that way. Instead, it was definition, application, proof, etc...
“People listen to debates because they care about the issue. And they only care about the issue because they’ve already taken a side. Caring then innoculates them to reason.”
This conflicts with my personal experience so badly, I’m not sure what to make of it. When I see pamphlets for debates at my local university campus, the only ones that sound exciting are ones that both sides of the debate sound reasonable. Also, I have changed my mind about important political issues twice as the result of listening to a debate. Obviously, this is simply anecdotal evidence, but without showing me some kind of data on the subject I will continue to trust my own experience.
Does the fact that I find this guy’s formulation of the cosmological argument somewhat persuasive mean that I can’t hang out with the cool kids anymore? I’m not saying it is an airtight argument, just that it isn’t obviously meaningless or ridiculous metaphysics.
“Amateur” shouldn’t have the negative connotation it has. Using science to improve your life and increase your ability to achieve your goals is in no way a bad thing even if you aren’t an expert in that field of science (pretending to be an expert is another thing entirely).
Do engineers rely on amateur physics to do their jobs?
If we aren’t relying on amateur behavioral psychology in our personal lives aren’t we relying on folk psychology instead?
Yeah there is, they are just really small. Just the other day I asked if someone would come in on their day off from work in order to cover for me. I paid them, and they performed the service. All this went down without any government intervention, coercion, or use of force.
If you mean that there is not a single country on Earth that contains ONLY free markets then you are absolutely right.
I like this post, because I really think that you are trying to understand other people instead of merely dismissing them.
What implications does this analysis have for those of us who have changed deeply held political beliefs (more than once)? Is it really a change in brain structure or chemistry? Have I been rewired to get upset about different things than I used to?
Many of the arguments on LW remind me of this quote:
“for the obscurity of the distinctions and of the principles that they use is the reason why they talk about everything as confidently as if they knew about it, and defend everything they say about it against the most subtle and knowledgeable, without leaving any room to convince them of their mistake. In doing this they seem to me to resemble a blind person who, in order to fight without any disadvantage against a sighted person, would bring them into the depths of a very dark celar.”
-Rene Descartes from the Discourse on Method
You do realize that is a parody, right?
“All mathematical reasoning involving “infinities” involves self-evident contradictions, but human mathematicians have a blind spot with respect to them.” -Eliezer Yudkowsky
I’m going to lose sleep over this one...Is there anything to this?
You sure have a lot of trust in “known facts”. It wasn’t until after my university education that I found out that the known fact that “people in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat because the Bible says so” was not really true at all. I uncover false “known facts” that I was taught during my formal education every month or so.
“Known facts” are overrated.
“Now of course you wish you could answer “Yes”, but as an ideal game theorist yourself, you realize that, once you actually reach town, you’ll have no further motive to pay off the driver.”
Can’t you contract your way out of this one?
Actually there are already drugs that do a pretty good job of reducing body fat (even in people that are obese). The catch is that all of them are illegal, even the ones that can be used safely for the majority of people.
I guess he could say that you think damage or harm is icky.
It is conventional wisdom that the conventional wisdom in the Middle Ages was that the world was flat. Your conclusion is right for the wrong reason.
Are you saying that it is not the case that “evolution is the subject of a controversy in science”?
And how does that help if the premises in your “reasoned argument” are arrived at via intuition?
I would give that same description to The Nature of Rationality by Robert Nozick.
How many hours on average do you sleep a week? Also, I know that the ECA stack makes losing fat much easier and raises your resting heart rate, but what evidence do you have that ECA stacks “take away hunger”?
What is wrong with formal logic? Would the average fiction reader be harmed by becoming marginally better at formal logic?