the fact that you’ve completely misrepresented what I said
You might want to think about downsizing that chip on your shoulder. My comment asks you to consider my argument. It says nothing—literally, not a single word—about what you have said.
But so as not to waste your righteous indignation, let me ask you a couple of questions that will surely completely misrepresent what you said. Those “societies like ours” that you mentioned, can you tell me a bit more about them? How many did you observe, on the basis of which features did you decide they are “like ours”, what did the ones that are not “like ours” look like?
Oh, and your comment seems to be truncated, did you lose the second part somewhere?
No chip so far as I can see. If you think your comment says nothing at all about what I said, go and look up conversational implicatures.
You can define “societies like ours” in lots of ways. Any reasonable way is likely to have the properties (1) that observing what our society does gives us (probabilistic) information about what societies like ours tend to do and (2) that information about what societies like ours tend to do gives (probabilistic) information about our future.
(Not very much information, so any argument of this sort is weak. But I already said that.)
did you lose the second part somewhere?
Nope. Why do you think I might have? Because I didn’t say what the “two important ways” are? I thought that would be obvious, but I’ll make it explicit. (1) “If we do …” versus “If societies like ours tend to do …” (hence, since some of those societies may be in the past, no need for reverse causation etc.) (2) “we make it more likely that …” versus “it is more likely that …” (hence, since not a claim about what “we” do, no question about what we have power to do).
You might want to think about downsizing that chip on your shoulder. My comment asks you to consider my argument. It says nothing—literally, not a single word—about what you have said.
But so as not to waste your righteous indignation, let me ask you a couple of questions that will surely completely misrepresent what you said. Those “societies like ours” that you mentioned, can you tell me a bit more about them? How many did you observe, on the basis of which features did you decide they are “like ours”, what did the ones that are not “like ours” look like?
Oh, and your comment seems to be truncated, did you lose the second part somewhere?
No chip so far as I can see. If you think your comment says nothing at all about what I said, go and look up conversational implicatures.
You can define “societies like ours” in lots of ways. Any reasonable way is likely to have the properties (1) that observing what our society does gives us (probabilistic) information about what societies like ours tend to do and (2) that information about what societies like ours tend to do gives (probabilistic) information about our future.
(Not very much information, so any argument of this sort is weak. But I already said that.)
Nope. Why do you think I might have? Because I didn’t say what the “two important ways” are? I thought that would be obvious, but I’ll make it explicit. (1) “If we do …” versus “If societies like ours tend to do …” (hence, since some of those societies may be in the past, no need for reverse causation etc.) (2) “we make it more likely that …” versus “it is more likely that …” (hence, since not a claim about what “we” do, no question about what we have power to do).