On the distant chance that you’re actually attempting to be reasonable and are just messing it up, I downvoted this post because I automatically downvote everything that tries to Poison the Well against being downvoted. Being preemptively accused of confirmation bias is itself sufficient reason to downvote.
Thanks, EY. I am asking a real question in that i want to know what people think of the question.
As a person that does not think rationality is as useful or as universal as people do on this site, I am at a disadvantage in that i’m in the minority here, however, I’m still posting/reading to question myself through engaging with those I disagree with. I seek the community’s perspective, not to necessarily believe it or label it correct/wrong, but simply to understand it. My personal experience (with this name and old ones) has been that people generally do not respond to viewpoints that are contrary to the conventional thought—this is problematic because this community is best-positioned to defend weaknesses (claimed or real) regarding rationality. Looking at it another way, if I believe that rationality has serious flaws, I need to be able to defend myself against YOUR best arguments, but can only do that if someone engages with me so I understand those arguments first.
The point of my post was to ask a serious question and poke you guys with a stick, hoping the poke elicits a response to the question—frankly it worked, and now i will swallow, learn from and hopefully respond to the various comments. So long as negative points don’t prevent me from reading and posting, i could care less about what points i have—I also note that I was clear about my intentions about wanting to goad an answer.
Perhaps you disagree with my methods, but since my goal was to hear multiple perspectives, and got more than I usually do, i see its a win for instrumental rationality. And, if my follow-ups suggest I’m not an troll/general a**, perhaps I wont have to use dirty tricks going forward!
On the distant chance that you’re actually attempting to be reasonable and are just messing it up, I downvoted this post because I automatically downvote everything that tries to Poison the Well against being downvoted. Being preemptively accused of confirmation bias is itself sufficient reason to downvote.
Thanks, EY. I am asking a real question in that i want to know what people think of the question.
As a person that does not think rationality is as useful or as universal as people do on this site, I am at a disadvantage in that i’m in the minority here, however, I’m still posting/reading to question myself through engaging with those I disagree with. I seek the community’s perspective, not to necessarily believe it or label it correct/wrong, but simply to understand it. My personal experience (with this name and old ones) has been that people generally do not respond to viewpoints that are contrary to the conventional thought—this is problematic because this community is best-positioned to defend weaknesses (claimed or real) regarding rationality. Looking at it another way, if I believe that rationality has serious flaws, I need to be able to defend myself against YOUR best arguments, but can only do that if someone engages with me so I understand those arguments first.
The point of my post was to ask a serious question and poke you guys with a stick, hoping the poke elicits a response to the question—frankly it worked, and now i will swallow, learn from and hopefully respond to the various comments. So long as negative points don’t prevent me from reading and posting, i could care less about what points i have—I also note that I was clear about my intentions about wanting to goad an answer.
Perhaps you disagree with my methods, but since my goal was to hear multiple perspectives, and got more than I usually do, i see its a win for instrumental rationality. And, if my follow-ups suggest I’m not an troll/general a**, perhaps I wont have to use dirty tricks going forward!