PeterL(PeterL)

• PeterL 10 May 2020 22:51 UTC

  4 points

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread—May 2020

  Hello, I wanted to post something but when reading the guidelines, I am a little confused. The issue of my confusion is “Aim to explain, not persuade”. English is not my native language, but when I googled “persuade” I found that it means “induce (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument. ”. To me, this sounds a little ridiculous on the rationality forum.

• PeterL 11 May 2020 14:16 UTC

  1 point

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread—May 2020

  Hello, I would like to ask a straightforward question: Is there a logically valid way to call evolution science and creationism a pseudo-science? I am not creationist, I just hope I will strengthen my evolutionistic opinion. And I would like to have it in a clear form. I must admit that because of my family member I visited a specific creationistic site. And there was the extraordinary claim that there is no such logically valid way and I would like to disprove this for me and my family member by stating at least one. And I want to stop visiting that site after disproving. Thanks for answer in advance.

  Maybe the answer is that creationistic hypotheses don’t make any falsifiable but confirmed predictions, but I am not sure.

  And I would also like to ask a broader question whether there is some rationally efective method of looking for the truth on the internet. Or more simply stated, who to believe.

• PeterL 11 Oct 2020 5:26 UTC

  3 points

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread – Oc­to­ber 2020

  Hello, I would like to ask, whether you think that some ideas can be dangerous to discuss publicly despite you are honest with them and even despite you are doing your best attempt to be logical/​rational and even despite you are wishing nothing bad to other people/​beings and even despite you are open for its discussion in terms of being prepared for its rejection according to a justified reason.

  In this stage, I will just tell you I would like to discuss a specific moral issue, which might be original, and therefore I am skeptical this way and I feel a little insecure about discussing it publicly.

• PeterL 11 Oct 2020 15:29 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread – Oc­to­ber 2020

  I would like to ask you, whether there are some criteria (I am fine even with the subjective ones) according to which you, experienced rationalists, would accept/​consider some metaethics despite the very bad humankind’s experience with them.

  I expect answers like: convincing; convincing after very careful attempt to find its flaws; logical; convincing after very careful attempt to find its flaws by 10 experienced rationalists; after careful questioning; useful; harmless; etc.

• PeterL 8 Jan 2021 8:12 UTC

  3 points

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread—Jan­uary 2021

  Hello, lesswrongsters (if I can call you like this),

  What do you think about the following statement: “You should be relatively skeptical about each of your past impressions, but you should be absolutely non-skeptical about your most current one at a given moment. Not because it was definitely true, but because there is practically no other option.”

  Please, give me your opinions, criticism, etc. about this.

• PeterL 8 Jan 2021 21:49 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: PeterL’s comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread—Jan­uary 2021

  Ok, I will put it a little bit straightforward.

  My Christian friend claimed that atheists/​rationalists/​skeptics/​evolutionists cannot trust even their own reason (beacuse it is the product of their imperfect brains in their opinion).

  So I wanted to counterargue reasonably, and my statement above seems to me a relatively reasonable and relevant. And I don’t know whether it would convince my Christian friend, but it is convincing at least me :) .

  Thanks in advance for your opinions, etc.

• PeterL 8 Jan 2021 23:43 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: jsalvatier’s comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread—Jan­uary 2021

  Yes, but it can happen that in the time course of our individual existence two “justified opinions” inconsistent with each other can occur in our minds. (And if they didn’t, we would be doomed to believe all flawed opinions from our childhood without possibility to update them because of rejecting new inconsistent opinions, etc.)

  And morover, we are born with some “priors” which are not completely true but relatively useful.

  And there are some perceptual illusions.

  And prof. Richard Dawkins claims that there are relatively very frequent hallucinations that could make us think that a miracle is happenning (if I understood him correctly). By relatively frequent I mean that probably any of the healthy people could experience a hallucination at least once in a lifetime (often without realizing it).

  And of course, there are mental fallacies and biases.

  And if the process is reliable, why different people do have different opinions and inconsistent “truths”?

  Thus, I think that the process is relatively reliable but not totally reliable.

  PS: I am relatively new here. So hopefully, my tone is not agressively persuasive. If any of you have a serious problem with my approach, please, criticize me.

• PeterL 13 Feb 2021 13:17 UTC

  2 points

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread – Fe­bru­ary 2021

  A riddle (maybe trivial for you, lesswrongsters, but I am still curious of your answers/​guesses):

  It is neither truth nor lie. What is it?

My at­tempt to find the mean­ing of existence

• PeterL 14 Mar 2021 20:04 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: My at­tempt to find the mean­ing of existence

  To simplify my consideration, let’s assume it doesn’t.

• PeterL 18 Mar 2021 19:13 UTC

  1 point

  on: My at­tempt to find the mean­ing of existence

  Mr./​Mrs. nim, thanks for asking.

  By meangfulness of existence, I mean the case related to whole existing reality in whole (eternal) time that would be good to prefer when choosing actions to perform. Or said differently, it would be good to maximize the probability of the meanigfulness by choosing proper actions.

  So potentially, the whole existence can be either meaningful or not (indpendently of time variable), and we should make it be the former.

  But the meaningfulness of moment is the different term, which I have chosen to be auxiliary in the statements.

  I wanted to apply curiosity and this idea was the output of my mind, and it can be burdened by my subjectivity. And I would like to apply the second virtue (relinquishment) but before doing it, I would like to have an alternative to remain. So I am open to reasonable alternatives from people here.

  I also admit, that the items in the second statement can be arbitrary, but better arbitrary than none.

• PeterL 8 Sep 2021 3:54 UTC

  1 point

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread Septem­ber 2021

  Hello, I would like to ask whether there is any summary/​discussion of necessary/​sufficient criteria according to which a reason for whatever (belief, action, goal, …) is sufficient. If not, I would like to discuss it.

• PeterL 9 Sep 2021 18:58 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: CraigMichael’s comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread Septem­ber 2021

  OK, thanks, but then one of my additional questions is: what is the reasonable threshold for the probability of my belief A given all available evidence B1, B2, .., Bn? And why?

• PeterL 10 Sep 2021 17:30 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: gilch’s comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread Septem­ber 2021

  Ok, thanks. This is very interesting, and correct in theory (I guess). And I would be very glad to apply it. But before doing my first steps in it on my own by the trial-&-error method, I would like to know some best practices in doing so, if they are available at all. I strongly doubt this is a common practice in a common population and I slightly doubt that it is the common practice also for a “common” attendee of this forum, but I would still like to make this my (usual) habit.

  And the greatest issue I see in this is how to talk to common people around me about common uncertain things that are probabilistic if they actually think of the common things as they would be certain. Should I try to gradually and unnoticeably change their paradigm? Or should I use double language: probabilistic inside, but confidential outside?

  (I am aware that these questions might be difficult, and I don’t necessarily expect direct answers.)

[Question] Your Preferences

• PeterL 6 Jan 2022 22:54 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Pattern’s comment on: Your Preferences

  Excuse me. What should be easy to remember? Concept names or whole frameworks?

• PeterL 11 Jan 2022 19:53 UTC

  1 point

  on: Ta­boo Your Words

  1. entity that regularly makes the acts of changing the owner of object of value from the other entities to self without providing any signal according to that the given other entity could have any reason to hypothesize such change in short term time horizon of its perceptual and cognitive activity.

  
  2. relatively common state of a natural system of currently detecting an internal insufficiency of specific sources interpreting it as the threat to its existence or proper functioning and causing it to perform an attempt to compensate for it and deflect such threat.

  
  3. the natural object which is usually keeping its shape and is making an impression of having a value much greater than other kinds of natural shape-keeping objects probably due to the easily recognizable hue and also due to the relatively low amount of it in reachable universe.

• PeterL 17 Jan 2022 13:46 UTC

  1 point

  NIL

  on: Open Thread—Jan 2022 [Vote Ex­per­i­ment!]

  I agree that voting might be little bit annoying.

  On the other side, it could potentially make the search for specific qualities of comment much easier if automated (by sorting). (E.g. “Now I am not in the mood for solving difficult concepts so I want something with high clarity evaluation.” or “Now I am too tired to argue/​fight so I want something empathic now.”)

• PeterL 18 Jan 2022 21:50 UTC

  6 points

  on: Scope Insensitivity

  My suggestion for alternative explanation is that people somehow assume that for saving more birds, more people will be asked to donate, so after dividing, the amounts per person will be very similar.

• PeterL 19 Jan 2022 22:15 UTC

  1 point

  on: Why truth? And...

  For everytime I am curious about “how the things are?”, I would like to be curious also about “what to do?” then. (Curious pragmatism)