I think I wanted to show how people who are monogamous usually are because of a cached belief, whereas people who are polyamorous usually are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.
Then you failed. Consider the following variant of your argument:
“there are plenty of non child molesters who think it’s immoral for any adult to have a sexual relationship with a child, whereas I’d guess there aren’t many child molesters who think it’s immoral for other adults to have relationships exclusively with adults.”
“I think I wanted to show that people who are not child molesters usually are because of a cached belief, whereas people who are child molesters usually are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.”
Why was that downvoted to −2? Technically that’s correct (though by “show” I didn’t mean ‘rigorously prove’, I meant ‘provide one more piece of evidence’—but yeah, the second paragraph of your comment is evidence for the third, though priors are different in the two cases).
the second paragraph of your comment is evidence for the third, though priors are different in the two cases
I don’t think so. The existence of a widespread moral prohibition against some uncommon behavior, which is not matched by a claim of immorality of the typical behavior by those who defend the uncommon behavior, is not evidence that the widespread moral prohibition is a “cached belief” (that is, a meme maintaned only due to tradition and intellectual laziness). People in the majority group could well have pondered the uncommon behavior and decided they had good reason to consider it immoral.
Let A(X) = “There are plenty of non X-ers who think it’s immoral for anyone to X, whereas there aren’t many X-ers who think it’s immoral for other people to refuse to X.”
Let B(X) = “People who are non-X-ers usually are because of a cached belief, whereas people who are X-ers usually are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.”
Are you really saying that log(P(A(X)|B(X))/P(A(X)|¬B(X))) ≤ 0? or do you just mean that while positive it is very small? Because I really can’t see how A(X) can be more likely given ¬B(X) than given B(X).
¬B(X) is “People who are non-X-ers rarely are because of a cached belief, or people who are X-ers rarely are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.”
Why do you think that ¬B(X) would make A(X) any less likely than B(X) would?
This sounds true, but I’m not sure how it’s relevant to my comment beyond my use of the word “polyamory”.
I think I wanted to show how people who are monogamous usually are because of a cached belief, whereas people who are polyamorous usually are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.
Then you failed. Consider the following variant of your argument:
“there are plenty of non child molesters who think it’s immoral for any adult to have a sexual relationship with a child, whereas I’d guess there aren’t many child molesters who think it’s immoral for other adults to have relationships exclusively with adults.”
“I think I wanted to show that people who are not child molesters usually are because of a cached belief, whereas people who are child molesters usually are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.”
That’s distressingly convincing.
Why was that downvoted to −2? Technically that’s correct (though by “show” I didn’t mean ‘rigorously prove’, I meant ‘provide one more piece of evidence’—but yeah, the second paragraph of your comment is evidence for the third, though priors are different in the two cases).
“Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass.”
I don’t think so. The existence of a widespread moral prohibition against some uncommon behavior, which is not matched by a claim of immorality of the typical behavior by those who defend the uncommon behavior, is not evidence that the widespread moral prohibition is a “cached belief” (that is, a meme maintaned only due to tradition and intellectual laziness). People in the majority group could well have pondered the uncommon behavior and decided they had good reason to consider it immoral.
Let A(X) = “There are plenty of non X-ers who think it’s immoral for anyone to X, whereas there aren’t many X-ers who think it’s immoral for other people to refuse to X.”
Let B(X) = “People who are non-X-ers usually are because of a cached belief, whereas people who are X-ers usually are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.”
Are you really saying that log(P(A(X)|B(X))/P(A(X)|¬B(X))) ≤ 0? or do you just mean that while positive it is very small? Because I really can’t see how A(X) can be more likely given ¬B(X) than given B(X).
¬B(X) is “People who are non-X-ers rarely are because of a cached belief, or people who are X-ers rarely are because they’ve thought about both possibilities and concluded one is better.”
Why do you think that ¬B(X) would make A(X) any less likely than B(X) would?
Ah. Very true.