But it was obvious to some of us the moment the problem was described. So replace 10 + 10 with something that isn’t obvious to you initially, but is definitely true. Maybe the integral doesn’t tell you the area under the curve. Maybe there are no other planets in the universe. Maybe tectonic plates don’t move. Is a site that talks about [math, astronomy, geology] obligated to not downvote such questions because they aren’t obvious to everyone? I think any community can establish a line beyond which questioning of base material will be discouraged. That is a defining characteristic of any forum community, with the most open one being 4chan. There is no objective line, but I’m fine with the current one.
Here’s another rule that seems better: downvote posts that are either poorly argued or argue for a position that is very stupid. In order to think there are no other planets or no tectonic plates, one must be very dumb—to deny orthogonality thesis, one need not be. Scott Aaronson is by no means dumb.
I don’t think you or Scott is dumb, but arguments people make don’t inherit their intellect.
And who gets to decide the cutoff for “very dumb”? Currently the community does. Your proposal for downvote poorly argued or argue for a position that is very stupid is already the policy. People aren’t trying to silence you. I recommend going to the Discord where I’m sure people will be happy to chat with you at length about the post topic and these comment sub-topics. I can’t promise I’ll be responding more here.
I guess if the belief is that the orthogonality thesis is totally trivial—anyone with half a brain can recognize that it is true—then it would make sense to downvote. That seems obviously wrong though.
And indeed your point is that it [The Orthogonality Thesis] is not obviously true, not that it is obviously false. So if I were to downvote your post because I thought your argument was silly or obviously wrong, that would be equivalent to stating that it is obviously true. This couldn’t of course be the case, I doubt that anything in the Sequences was written down because the author considered those things to be obviously true.
But it was obvious to some of us the moment the problem was described. So replace 10 + 10 with something that isn’t obvious to you initially, but is definitely true. Maybe the integral doesn’t tell you the area under the curve. Maybe there are no other planets in the universe. Maybe tectonic plates don’t move. Is a site that talks about [math, astronomy, geology] obligated to not downvote such questions because they aren’t obvious to everyone? I think any community can establish a line beyond which questioning of base material will be discouraged. That is a defining characteristic of any forum community, with the most open one being 4chan. There is no objective line, but I’m fine with the current one.
Here’s another rule that seems better: downvote posts that are either poorly argued or argue for a position that is very stupid. In order to think there are no other planets or no tectonic plates, one must be very dumb—to deny orthogonality thesis, one need not be. Scott Aaronson is by no means dumb.
I don’t think you or Scott is dumb, but arguments people make don’t inherit their intellect.
And who gets to decide the cutoff for “very dumb”? Currently the community does. Your proposal for downvote poorly argued or argue for a position that is very stupid is already the policy. People aren’t trying to silence you. I recommend going to the Discord where I’m sure people will be happy to chat with you at length about the post topic and these comment sub-topics. I can’t promise I’ll be responding more here.
I guess if the belief is that the orthogonality thesis is totally trivial—anyone with half a brain can recognize that it is true—then it would make sense to downvote. That seems obviously wrong though.
You know you wrote 10+10=21?
Haha, fixed.
And indeed your point is that it [The Orthogonality Thesis] is not obviously true, not that it is obviously false. So if I were to downvote your post because I thought your argument was silly or obviously wrong, that would be equivalent to stating that it is obviously true. This couldn’t of course be the case, I doubt that anything in the Sequences was written down because the author considered those things to be obviously true.
Not all things that are obviously true once stated are immediate to think of.