As for listing common memes that were spawned by the Dark Side—would you care to take a stab at it, dear readers?
Cultural relativity.
Such-and-such is unconstitutional.
The founding fathers never intended… (various appeals to stick to the founding fathers original vision)
Be reasonable (moderate)
Show respect for your elders
It’s my private property
_ is human nature.
Don’t judge me.
_ is unnatural and therefore wrong.
_ is natural and therefore right.
We need to switch to alternative energies such as wind, solar, and tidal.
The poor are lazy
The entire American political vocabulary (bordering on Orwellian)
Animal rights
“‘In general, beliefs require evidence.’
In general? Which beliefs don’t?”
This is a language problem. “In general” or “generally” to a scientist/mathematician/engineer means “always,” whereas in everyday speech it means “sometimes.”
For example I could tell you that a fence with 2 sections has 3 posts ( I=I=I ), or I could tell you that “in general” a fence with N sections has N+1 posts.
“In general” does not mean “always”, it means “by default”. It is not the same thing. Rectangles, in general, do not have equal sides with a common dot—except the squares which do. However, there must be reasons for excluding something from a default—and a random false belief is unlikely to find such reasons (not to mention the very going from belief to finding such reasons is backwards).
“We need to switch to alternative energies such as wind, solar, and tidal.
The poor are lazy …
Animal rights”
I don’t think these fit. Regardless of whether you agree with them, they are specific assertions, not general claims about reasoning with consistently anti-epistemological effects.
Actually the poor are lazy and animal rights seem to fit to me. Animal rights were a hard sell for me, but thinking about it I had to come to the conclusion, that the bottom line “we should treat animals well” was probably either motivated by “I don’t want to eat sick food” or “Awww, cuute!”. Not by “I believe that animals in general need rights, because...” What? They react faster to stimuli than plants? They show complex behaviour? In that case, do you not kill mosquitos? Do you want rights for some fungi as well? How about programs that show complex behaviour? It seems like this was written after the bottom line.
Similarly, since we do not live in an equal world, simply saying that the poor were lazy makes sense if your motivation is to not feel guilty about not trying to help them.
Alternative energies however… I think time proved our dear OP wrong on that front. We may not need to use any one of these specifically, but we need to get away from fossil fuels and until we have fusion or solar farms in orbit, alternative energies are the longest term option. Even nuclear runs out of fuel in a relatively short amount of time.
The probability is the prior times the evidence ratio, so the higher the prior probability, the less evidence you need. If there’s a lottery with one million numbers, and you have no evidence for anything, you’ll think there’s a 0.0001% chance of it getting 839772 exactly, a 50% chance of it getting 500000 or less, and a 99.9999% chance of it getting something other than 839772. Thus, you can be pretty sure it won’t land on 839772 even without evidence.
The ultimate prior is maximum entropy, aka “idk”, aka “50/50: either happens or not”. We never actually have it, because we start gathering evidence for how the world is before our brains even form enough to make any links between it.
That prior doesn’t work when there is a countable number of hypotheses, aka “I’ve picked a number from {0,1,2,...}. Which?” or “Given that the laws of physics can be described by a computer program, which?”.
Your knowledge of the rules of probability is evidence. It’s not evidence specific to this question, but it is evidence for this question, among others.
Well, cultural relativity is a fact, as there are no morality and people either justify any of their actions via tradition, or simply follow it when they don’t want to think.
Universal life rights would be great (no less than human rights, at least. I’m one personality legalist and one personality ecocentrist who wants sentience to remain in order to save biosphere from geological and astronomical events that are coming sooner than new Homo sapiens may emerge through evolution if current one is extinct before making AGI)
Everything else, I upvote.
In general, beliefs require evidence.
In general? Which beliefs don’t?
Think of what it would take to deny evolution or heliocentrism
Or what it would take to prove that the Moon doesn’t exist.
As for listing common memes that were spawned by the Dark Side—would you care to take a stab at it, dear readers?
Cultural relativity. Such-and-such is unconstitutional. The founding fathers never intended… (various appeals to stick to the founding fathers original vision) Be reasonable (moderate) Show respect for your elders It’s my private property _ is human nature. Don’t judge me. _ is unnatural and therefore wrong. _ is natural and therefore right. We need to switch to alternative energies such as wind, solar, and tidal. The poor are lazy The entire American political vocabulary (bordering on Orwellian) Animal rights
.. much more.
“‘In general, beliefs require evidence.’ In general? Which beliefs don’t?”
This is a language problem. “In general” or “generally” to a scientist/mathematician/engineer means “always,” whereas in everyday speech it means “sometimes.”
For example I could tell you that a fence with 2 sections has 3 posts ( I=I=I ), or I could tell you that “in general” a fence with N sections has N+1 posts.
Where N >= 3 the fence can (and often does) have N posts.
Ya, if it wraps in on itself, for sure.
Or if the farmer uses a tree instead. ;)
“How many posts does a fence have, if you call the tree a post?”
“In general” does not mean “always”, it means “by default”. It is not the same thing. Rectangles, in general, do not have equal sides with a common dot—except the squares which do. However, there must be reasons for excluding something from a default—and a random false belief is unlikely to find such reasons (not to mention the very going from belief to finding such reasons is backwards).
“We need to switch to alternative energies such as wind, solar, and tidal. The poor are lazy … Animal rights”
I don’t think these fit. Regardless of whether you agree with them, they are specific assertions, not general claims about reasoning with consistently anti-epistemological effects.
Actually the poor are lazy and animal rights seem to fit to me. Animal rights were a hard sell for me, but thinking about it I had to come to the conclusion, that the bottom line “we should treat animals well” was probably either motivated by “I don’t want to eat sick food” or “Awww, cuute!”. Not by “I believe that animals in general need rights, because...” What? They react faster to stimuli than plants? They show complex behaviour? In that case, do you not kill mosquitos? Do you want rights for some fungi as well? How about programs that show complex behaviour? It seems like this was written after the bottom line.
Similarly, since we do not live in an equal world, simply saying that the poor were lazy makes sense if your motivation is to not feel guilty about not trying to help them.
Alternative energies however… I think time proved our dear OP wrong on that front. We may not need to use any one of these specifically, but we need to get away from fossil fuels and until we have fusion or solar farms in orbit, alternative energies are the longest term option. Even nuclear runs out of fuel in a relatively short amount of time.
The probability is the prior times the evidence ratio, so the higher the prior probability, the less evidence you need. If there’s a lottery with one million numbers, and you have no evidence for anything, you’ll think there’s a 0.0001% chance of it getting 839772 exactly, a 50% chance of it getting 500000 or less, and a 99.9999% chance of it getting something other than 839772. Thus, you can be pretty sure it won’t land on 839772 even without evidence.
I think knowing a prior constitutes evidence. If you know that the lottery has one million numbers, that is a piece of evidence.
You need a prior to take evidence into account. If the prior is evidence, then what is the prior?
Hm… You make a good point. I’m not sure I understand this conceptually well enough to have any sort of coherent response.
The ultimate prior is maximum entropy, aka “idk”, aka “50/50: either happens or not”. We never actually have it, because we start gathering evidence for how the world is before our brains even form enough to make any links between it.
That prior doesn’t work when there is a countable number of hypotheses, aka “I’ve picked a number from {0,1,2,...}. Which?” or “Given that the laws of physics can be described by a computer program, which?”.
Your knowledge of the rules of probability is evidence. It’s not evidence specific to this question, but it is evidence for this question, among others.
Your link is broken.
Well, cultural relativity is a fact, as there are no morality and people either justify any of their actions via tradition, or simply follow it when they don’t want to think. Universal life rights would be great (no less than human rights, at least. I’m one personality legalist and one personality ecocentrist who wants sentience to remain in order to save biosphere from geological and astronomical events that are coming sooner than new Homo sapiens may emerge through evolution if current one is extinct before making AGI) Everything else, I upvote.