Yudkowsky recently posted a Twitter thread about how ideal reasoners respond to arguments. My understanding of his reasoning is:
The more smart/rational/whatever you are, the better you are at figuring out what is true
Thus, whether you believe the conclusion of an argument should be based primarily on whether the conclusion is true, rather than on how effectively the argument was presented
This principle seems valid to me.
Valentine, in a LessWrong comment thread, used Yudkowsky’s thread to draw the conclusion that a healthy rationalist community should not make arguments. I think this is silly. We are not, unfortunately, logically omniscient; we cannot just look at data and draw all the correct conclusions from it. The purpose of an argument is to help people realize what conclusions they should draw from data without having to figure it all out on their own.
Arguments are good for helping people reason about things
Yudkowsky recently posted a Twitter thread about how ideal reasoners respond to arguments. My understanding of his reasoning is:
The more smart/rational/whatever you are, the better you are at figuring out what is true
Thus, whether you believe the conclusion of an argument should be based primarily on whether the conclusion is true, rather than on how effectively the argument was presented
This principle seems valid to me.
Valentine, in a LessWrong comment thread, used Yudkowsky’s thread to draw the conclusion that a healthy rationalist community should not make arguments. I think this is silly. We are not, unfortunately, logically omniscient; we cannot just look at data and draw all the correct conclusions from it. The purpose of an argument is to help people realize what conclusions they should draw from data without having to figure it all out on their own.