if you dismiss any evidence to the contrary you have to answer: what evidence would be strong enough to change your mind?
As a separate point, I have always argued against the validity of a certain argument against theists, that they are obligated to say what would constitute evidence sufficient to change their minds. The demand is an argument from ignorance. Nonetheless, being able to articulate what sufficiently contradictory evidence would be is a point in an arguers favor, even though the inability to do so is not fatal.
In this case, I’d say the question is somewhat ill-formed for two reasons. First, many entirely different things would be sufficient evidence to get me to change my mind, but if other things were also the case, they would no longer be sufficient. Certain statements by the CIA might be sufficient, but not if there were also other statements from the FBI.
Second, there are many sorts of mind changing possible. The more sane conspiracy theorists simply say the official account is not credible. The others articulate theories that, even granting all of there premises, are still less likely than the official story. A related point is what it means to be wrong according to different logics. If I believe in Coca-Cola’s version of Santa Claus and also believe that Kobe Bryant is left-handed, in one sense there is no “Kobe Bryant” in the same way that there is no “Santa Claus”. In a more useful sense, we say “Kobe Bryant really exists, but is right handed, and Santa Claus does not exist.” This is so even though there is no one thing preventing us from saying “Santa Claus is really young, not old, tall and thin, not fat, has no beard and shaves his head, is black, and not white, and plays shooting guard for the Lakers under the alias “Kobe Bryant”, and does nothing unusual on Christmas.” Whether you say things I learn falsify the official story or modify it is a matter of semantics, but certain elements-like the involvement of Al-Quaeda-are more central to it than others. These elements are better established by existing evidence and would take correspondingly more evidence to dislodge.
So the answer to “what evidence would be strong enough to change your mind?” varies a lot depending on exactly what is being asked.
But my problem is not with people discounting evidence(everyone is free to close their eyes) but outright downvoting evidence that goes against their beliefs is social punishment.
I think it is notable and important that the different but similar things you said got different responses. One was downvoted unto automatic hiding (the threshold is set to hide at −3 or less (more negative) by default). One was downvoted much more. We can speculate as to why but its important to acknowledge different community responses to different behavior (I won’t prejudge it by saying “Different going against social beliefs”).
Onto speculation: one problem with the video as evidence for explosions was a certain kind of jumping to conclusions. The guy said he heard explosions, but this is skipping a step. I could just as well say I heard people in a box, when I had actually heard sound waves emitted by a speaker attached to a computer. The guy’s insistence that explosions were causing the sound is very strange, even granted that he had heard explosions before and the sounds he heard may have sounded exactly like those. Likewise for his claim they were coming from beneath him, considering what was going on.
Similarly, your assumption about the reason for your downvotes is certainly skipping steps. Most noticeable is how you don’t distinguish what you are being socially punished for among your several downvoted posts, but the response to them was so different.
It’s not so simple as that you were “go[ing] against their beliefs”. Not everyone uses the voting function identically, but assuming many others use it as I do I can offer an analysis. I use it to push things to where I think they should be, rather than as an expression that I was glad I read a post (in hopes others will do the same, such that votes reflect what individuals were glad to have read. I believe something like this was the intent of the system’s creators). I see −4 and −15 as not inappropriate final marks for your posts, and so didn’t weigh in on them through the voting mechanism.
The problem with your first post was that it unfairly pushed the work of argument onto Eliezer. This is the same problem with the poll sent out by the fundamentalists to philosophers a few months ago, I couldn’t find it, but it included questions such as “Do you agree: life begins at conception?” and “Do you agree: humans are unique and unlike the other animals?” The problem with that question is that the work/number of words needed to adequately disentangle and answer that exceed those required to ask it. Your question also didn’t start from anywhere, you would have gotten a better response if you had said you thought the beliefs either actually right or wrong but not insane.
The tl;dr is that it was a passive-aggressive question. A small sin, for which it gets a −4, as implicitly the one voicing it disagrees with it and is against the communal norm, how important that factor is, I can’t know.
The video evidence was a larger sin, as it was basically a waste of time to listen to it. First, the guy emphasized that he certainly heard explosions beneath him, as if by disbelieving that one would be thinking him to be a liar. Like I said above, this is the same thing ghost observers do: I don’t necessarily disbelieve you heard what you heard and saw what you saw, I just am unsure about the original cause of that noise, especially considering how humans hear what they hear based on what they are familiar with hearing and expecting to hear (the multiple-drafts model of cognition).
What’s more, when the advocate of a position has an opportunity to direct someone to evidence supporting his or her position and must elect to give them one piece of evidence in an attempt to spread the belief, I expect them to go with their best argument, which in turn ought to sound pretty impressive, as even incorrect positions often have one compelling argument in their favor.
If I had come across the video you showed as the first video I saw in the course of randomly watching accounts of 9/11 survivors (if a random sample of survivors were filmed and archived), it would be maybe perhaps be somewhat suspicious. As a video cherry picked by someone trying to justify skepticism, it’s catastrophically weak, shockingly so actually. I expect cherry picked evidence in favor of any conspiracy to at least induce a physiological response, e.g. OMG bush has reptilian eyes he is a reptile he is a lizard person, oh wait that’s stupid, it’s an artifact of light being shined on dozens of presidents millions of times and this video has been cherry-picked.
As a separate point, I have always argued against the validity of a certain argument against theists, that they are obligated to say what would constitute evidence sufficient to change their minds. The demand is an argument from ignorance. Nonetheless, being able to articulate what sufficiently contradictory evidence would be is a point in an arguers favor, even though the inability to do so is not fatal.
In this case, I’d say the question is somewhat ill-formed for two reasons. First, many entirely different things would be sufficient evidence to get me to change my mind, but if other things were also the case, they would no longer be sufficient. Certain statements by the CIA might be sufficient, but not if there were also other statements from the FBI.
Second, there are many sorts of mind changing possible. The more sane conspiracy theorists simply say the official account is not credible. The others articulate theories that, even granting all of there premises, are still less likely than the official story. A related point is what it means to be wrong according to different logics. If I believe in Coca-Cola’s version of Santa Claus and also believe that Kobe Bryant is left-handed, in one sense there is no “Kobe Bryant” in the same way that there is no “Santa Claus”. In a more useful sense, we say “Kobe Bryant really exists, but is right handed, and Santa Claus does not exist.” This is so even though there is no one thing preventing us from saying “Santa Claus is really young, not old, tall and thin, not fat, has no beard and shaves his head, is black, and not white, and plays shooting guard for the Lakers under the alias “Kobe Bryant”, and does nothing unusual on Christmas.” Whether you say things I learn falsify the official story or modify it is a matter of semantics, but certain elements-like the involvement of Al-Quaeda-are more central to it than others. These elements are better established by existing evidence and would take correspondingly more evidence to dislodge.
So the answer to “what evidence would be strong enough to change your mind?” varies a lot depending on exactly what is being asked.
I think it is notable and important that the different but similar things you said got different responses. One was downvoted unto automatic hiding (the threshold is set to hide at −3 or less (more negative) by default). One was downvoted much more. We can speculate as to why but its important to acknowledge different community responses to different behavior (I won’t prejudge it by saying “Different going against social beliefs”).
Onto speculation: one problem with the video as evidence for explosions was a certain kind of jumping to conclusions. The guy said he heard explosions, but this is skipping a step. I could just as well say I heard people in a box, when I had actually heard sound waves emitted by a speaker attached to a computer. The guy’s insistence that explosions were causing the sound is very strange, even granted that he had heard explosions before and the sounds he heard may have sounded exactly like those. Likewise for his claim they were coming from beneath him, considering what was going on.
Similarly, your assumption about the reason for your downvotes is certainly skipping steps. Most noticeable is how you don’t distinguish what you are being socially punished for among your several downvoted posts, but the response to them was so different.
It’s not so simple as that you were “go[ing] against their beliefs”. Not everyone uses the voting function identically, but assuming many others use it as I do I can offer an analysis. I use it to push things to where I think they should be, rather than as an expression that I was glad I read a post (in hopes others will do the same, such that votes reflect what individuals were glad to have read. I believe something like this was the intent of the system’s creators). I see −4 and −15 as not inappropriate final marks for your posts, and so didn’t weigh in on them through the voting mechanism.
The problem with your first post was that it unfairly pushed the work of argument onto Eliezer. This is the same problem with the poll sent out by the fundamentalists to philosophers a few months ago, I couldn’t find it, but it included questions such as “Do you agree: life begins at conception?” and “Do you agree: humans are unique and unlike the other animals?” The problem with that question is that the work/number of words needed to adequately disentangle and answer that exceed those required to ask it. Your question also didn’t start from anywhere, you would have gotten a better response if you had said you thought the beliefs either actually right or wrong but not insane.
The tl;dr is that it was a passive-aggressive question. A small sin, for which it gets a −4, as implicitly the one voicing it disagrees with it and is against the communal norm, how important that factor is, I can’t know.
The video evidence was a larger sin, as it was basically a waste of time to listen to it. First, the guy emphasized that he certainly heard explosions beneath him, as if by disbelieving that one would be thinking him to be a liar. Like I said above, this is the same thing ghost observers do: I don’t necessarily disbelieve you heard what you heard and saw what you saw, I just am unsure about the original cause of that noise, especially considering how humans hear what they hear based on what they are familiar with hearing and expecting to hear (the multiple-drafts model of cognition).
What’s more, when the advocate of a position has an opportunity to direct someone to evidence supporting his or her position and must elect to give them one piece of evidence in an attempt to spread the belief, I expect them to go with their best argument, which in turn ought to sound pretty impressive, as even incorrect positions often have one compelling argument in their favor.
If I had come across the video you showed as the first video I saw in the course of randomly watching accounts of 9/11 survivors (if a random sample of survivors were filmed and archived), it would be maybe perhaps be somewhat suspicious. As a video cherry picked by someone trying to justify skepticism, it’s catastrophically weak, shockingly so actually. I expect cherry picked evidence in favor of any conspiracy to at least induce a physiological response, e.g. OMG bush has reptilian eyes he is a reptile he is a lizard person, oh wait that’s stupid, it’s an artifact of light being shined on dozens of presidents millions of times and this video has been cherry-picked.