woozle

Karma: 99

woozle 26 Aug 2010 22:45 UTC
−2 points
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in reply to: Clippy’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
Exposition… disinformative?… contradiction… illogical, illogical… Norman, coordinate!

woozle 26 Aug 2010 22:11 UTC
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in reply to: cata’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
I’m not sure it’s important that my conclusions be “interesting”. The point was that we needed a guideline (or set thereof), and as far as I know this need has not been previously met.

Once we agree on a set of guidelines, then I can go on to show examples of rational moral decisions—or possibly not, in which case I update my understanding of reality.

Re ethical vs. other kinds: I’m inclined to agree. I was answering an argument that there is no such thing as a rational moral decision. Jack drew this distinction, not me. Yes, I took way too long coming around to the conclusion that there is no distinction, and I left too much of the detritus of my thinking process lying around in the final essay...

...but on the other hand, it seemed perhaps a little necessary to show a bit of my work, since I was basically coming around to saying “no, you’re wrong”.

If what you’re saying is that there should have been no point of contention, then I agree with that too.

“How can a terminal value be rational?”: As far as this argument goes, I assert no such thing. I’m not clear on how that question is important for supporting the point I was trying to make in that argument, much less this one.

I have another argument for the idea that it’s not rational to argue on the basis of a terminal value which is not at least partly shared by your audience—and that if your audience is potentially “all humanity”, then your terminal value should probably be something approaching “the common good of all humanity”. But that’s not a part of this argument.

I could write a post on that too, but I think I need to establish the validity of this point (i.e. how to spot the loonie) first, because that point (rationality of terminal values) builds on this one.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 21:47 UTC
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in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
Yes, I agree, it’s a balancing act.

My take on references I don’t get is either to ignore them, to ask someone (“hey, is this a reference to something? I don’t get why they said that.”), or possibly to Google it if looks Googleable.

I don’t think it should be a cause for penalty unless the references are so heavy that they interrupt the flow of the argument. It’s possible that I did that, but I don’t think I did.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 21:40 UTC
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in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
Yes, that is quite true. However, as you can see, I was indeed discussing how to spot irrationality, potentially from quite a long way away.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 21:35 UTC
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in reply to: cata’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna go eat worms...

I suppose it would be asking too much to just suggest that if a sentence or phrase seems out of place or perhaps even surreal, that readers could just assume it’s a reference they don’t get, and skip it?

If the resulting argument doesn’t make sense, then there’s a legit criticism to be made.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 21:31 UTC
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in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
For what it’s worth, here are the references. I’ll add a link here from the main post.
- “Spot the Loonie!” was a Monty Python satire of a game show. I’m using it here to refer to the idea of being able to tell when someone’s argument doesn’t make sense.
- “How to Identify the Essential Elements of Rationality from Quite a Long Way Away” refers to the title of a Monty Python episode whose title was, I think, “How to Identify Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away”.
- “Seven and a Half Million Years Later” refers to the length of time it took the computer Deep Thought, The Second-Greatest Computer in All Time and Space, to calculate The Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, And Everything (in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, aka H2G2).
- “I really have no idea if you’re going to like it” refers to Deep Thought’s reluctance, seven and a half million years later, to divulge The Answer: “You’re really not going to like it.” “is… is...” refers to this same dialogue, where Deep Thought holds off actually giving The Answer as long as possible.
- “The Question to the Ultimate Answer” refers to the fact that, having divulged The Answer, it pretty quickly became clear that it was necessary to know what the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, And Everything actually was, in order for the answer to make any sense.
- “So, have we worked out any kind of coherent picture… Well no...” refers to a scene in H2G2 where usage of The Infinite Improbability Drive gives rise (quite improbably) to the existence of “a bowl of petunias and a rather surprised-looking sperm whale”, the latter of which immediately begins trying to make cognitive sense of his surroundings. After assigning names (amazingly, they are the correct English words) to several collections of perceptions in his immediate environment, he pauses to ask “So, have we built up any coherent picture of things? Well… no, not really”… or something like that.
- “you know what I am saying, darleengs?” is a catchphrase used by Billy Crystal’s SNL parody of Fernando Lamas. (Note: comedian Billy Crystal should not be confused with evil neoconservative pundit Bill Krystol.)
- “A Theory About the Brontosaurus” refers to a Monty Python sketch in which a talk show interviewee has a theory (about the brontosaurus) which she introduces many times (“This is my theory. (cough cough) It goes like this. (cough) Here is the theory that I have (cough cough cough) My Theory About the Brontosaurus, and what it is too. Here it goes.”) before finally revealing her utterly trivial and non-enlightening conclusion.
- “ahem ahem” refers to the interviewee’s repeated coughing-delays in the above sketch.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:35 UTC
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in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
I can certainly attempt that. I considered doing so originally, but thought it would be too much like “explaining the joke” (a process notorious for efficient removal of humor). I also had this idea that the references were so ubiquitous by now that they were borderline cliche. I’m glad to discover that this is not the case… I think.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:30 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Emile’s comment on: Overcoming the mind-killer
I finally figured out what was going on, and fixed it. For some reason it got posted in “drafts” instead of on the site, and looking at the post while logged in gave no clue that this was the case.

Sorry about that!

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:27 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
The subjective part probably could have been shortened, but I thought it was at least partly necessary in order to give proper context, as in “why are you trying to define rationality when this whole web site is supposed to be about that?” or similar.

The question is, was it informative? If not, then how did it fail in that goal?

Maybe I should have started with the conclusions and then explained how I got there.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:21 UTC
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in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
They were references—Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python, respectively. I didn’t expect everyone to get them, and perhaps I should have taken them out, but the alternative seemed too damn serious and I thought it worth entertaining some people at the cost of leaving others (hopefully not many, in this crowd of geeks) scratching their heads.

I hope that clarifies. In general, if it seems surrealistic and out of place, it’s probably a reference.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:12 UTC
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in reply to: Oscar_Cunningham’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
My main conclusions are, oddly, enough, in the final section:

[paste]

I propose that the key elements of a rational conversation are (where “you” refers collectively to all participants):
- 1)you must use only documented reasoning processes: [1.1] using the best known process(es) for a given class of problem [1.2] stating clearly which particular process(es) you use [1.3] documenting any new processes you use
- 2) making every reasonable effort to verify that: [2.1] your inputs are reasonably accurate, and [2.2] there are no other reasoning processes which might be better suited to this class of problem, and [2.3] there are no significant flaws in in your application of the reasoning processes you are using, and [2.4] there are no significant inputs you are ignoring … So… can we agree on this? [/paste]
P.S. The list refuses to format nicely in comment mode; I did what I could.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:09 UTC
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in reply to: FAWS’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
Umm… why not?

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:07 UTC
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in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
I’m not sure I follow. Are you using “values” in the sense of “terminal values”? Or “instrumental values”? Or perhaps something else?

woozle 26 Aug 2010 18:03 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
I don’t think I have anything to add to your non-length-related points. Maybe that’s just because you seem to be agreeing with me. You’ve spun my points out a little further, though, and I find myself in agreement with where you ended up, so that’s a good sign that my argument is at least coherent enough to be understandable and possibly in accordance with reality. Yay. Now I have to go read the rest of the comments and find out why at least seven people thought it sucked...

woozle 26 Aug 2010 17:55 UTC
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in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
Yes, it could have been shorter, and that would probably have been clearer.

It also could have been a lot longer; I was somewhat torn by the apparent inconsistency of demanding documentation of thought-processes while not documenting my own—but I did manage to convince myself that if anyone actually questioned the conclusions, I could go into more detail. I cut out large chunks of it after deciding that this was a better strategy than trying to Explain All The Things.

It could probably have been shorter still, though—I ended up arriving at some fairly simple conclusions after a very roundabout process, and perhaps I didn’t need to leave as much of the scaffolding and detritus in place as I did. I was already on the 4th major revision, though, having used up several days of available-focus-time on it, and after a couple of peer-reviews I figured it was time to publish, imperfections or no… especially when a major piece of my argument is about the process of error-correction through rational dialogue.

Will comment on your content-related points separately.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 17:45 UTC
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in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Criteria for Rational Political Conversation
“Immense” wouldn’t be “reasonable” unless the problem was of such magnitude as to call for an immense amount of research. That’s why I qualify pretty much every requirement with that word.

woozle 26 Aug 2010 15:35 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Jack’s comment on: Overcoming the mind-killer
Here’s my answer, finally… or a more complete answer, anyway.

woozle 27 Mar 2010 2:42 UTC
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in reply to: Jack’s comment on: Overcoming the mind-killer
See my comment about “internal” and “external” terminal values—I think possibly that’s where we’re failing to communicate.

Internal terminal values don’t have to be rational—but external ones (goals for society) do, and need to take individual ones into account. Violating an individual internal TV causes suffering, which violates my proposed universal external TV.

For instance… if I’m a heterosexual male, then one of my terminal values might be to form a pair-bond with a female of my species. That’s an internal terminal value. This doesn’t mean that I think everyone should do this; I can still support gay rights. “Supporting gay rights” is an external value, but not a terminal one for me. For a gay person, it probably would be a terminal value—so prohibiting gays from marrying would be violating their internal terminal values, which causes suffering, which violates my proposed universal external terminal value of “minimizing suffering / maximizing happiness”—and THAT is why it is wrong to prohibit gays from marrying, not because I personally happen to think it is wrong (i.e. not because of my external intermediate value of supporting gay rights).

woozle 27 Mar 2010 2:31 UTC
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in reply to: Jack’s comment on: Overcoming the mind-killer

You’re basically advocating for redistributing wealth from part of the global upper class to part of the global middle class and ignoring those experiencing the most pain and the most injustice.

I’ve explained repeatedly—perhaps not in this subthread, so I’ll reiterate—that I’m only proposing reallocating domestic resources within the US, not resources which would otherwise be spent on foreign aid of any kind. I don’t see how that can be harmful to anyone except (possibly) the extremely rich people from whom the resources are being reallocated.

(Will respond to your other points in separate comments, to maximize topic-focus of any subsequent discussion.)

woozle 27 Mar 2010 2:22 UTC
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in reply to: Strange7’s comment on: Overcoming the mind-killer
Your example exposes the flaw in the “destroy everything instantly and painlessly” pseudo-solution: the latter assumes that life is more suffering than pleasure. (Euthanasia is only performed—or argued for, anyway—when the gain from continuing to live is believed to be outweighed by the suffering.)

I think this shows that there needs to be a term for pleasure/enjoyment in the formula...

...or perhaps a concept or word which equates to either suffering and pleasure depending on signage (+/-), and then we can simply say that we’re trying to maximize that term—where the exact aggregation function has yet to be determined, but we know it has a positive slope.