This post feels out of accord with the Virtues. It feels like a debate brief against religion rather than a curious, light, humble, empirical exploration. “On the wrong side of every moral issue in American history”? “Denying the government billions in tax revenue”? This doesn’t strike me as the talk of a truthseeker; rather, a polemicist.
Religion is true (vague, but you know what I mean I hope) with a very low odds ratio, perhaps 1-to-100k against? In any case way down in the hazy low probability region where the intuition has a hard time. Call it evidence of −70 to −40 decibels.
Religion net helps the total utility of humans in the present day with a still adverse but much higher odds ratio. I would be reluctant to go as far as −15 decibels.
It seems to me that you are conflating the two numbers.
Your first point about the claim of privacy is good, though.
On reflection I agree with you that my language was ill-considered. I’m not going to edit the original post, because there’s no point pretending I didn’t make the mistake.
Incidentally, since creating this post, my karma has gone from 45 to 4294967341. I would guess that this post was downvoted to a negative number, and it broke some sort of counter. I don’t know of any better way than a comment to report the bug, so there you have it.
I’ve been upvoted at least once in the interim, so I suspect that it’s the same bug after all: my net negative post is contributing the 2^32, and my upvoted comments are contributing the 47. I have nothing like the programming skill needed to confirm this.
I’ve been thinking about Talisman’s post further, and I think my education is to blame. It’s been so heavy on persuasive writing and rhetoric that I’ve gotten into the habit of overstating my own confidence and hiding the chain of reason justifying my opinions, as a writing style rather than a style of thought.
Whatever the case, this may be my last comment. With a karma score that high, I’m sure to transcend the cycle of reincarnation! Nirvana by divine software bug is unorthodox, but I’ll take what I can get.
This post feels out of accord with the Virtues. It feels like a debate brief against religion rather than a curious, light, humble, empirical exploration. “On the wrong side of every moral issue in American history”? “Denying the government billions in tax revenue”? This doesn’t strike me as the talk of a truthseeker; rather, a polemicist.
Religion is true (vague, but you know what I mean I hope) with a very low odds ratio, perhaps 1-to-100k against? In any case way down in the hazy low probability region where the intuition has a hard time. Call it evidence of −70 to −40 decibels.
Religion net helps the total utility of humans in the present day with a still adverse but much higher odds ratio. I would be reluctant to go as far as −15 decibels.
It seems to me that you are conflating the two numbers.
Your first point about the claim of privacy is good, though.
On reflection I agree with you that my language was ill-considered. I’m not going to edit the original post, because there’s no point pretending I didn’t make the mistake.
Incidentally, since creating this post, my karma has gone from 45 to 4294967341. I would guess that this post was downvoted to a negative number, and it broke some sort of counter. I don’t know of any better way than a comment to report the bug, so there you have it.
http://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=145
Edit: I’m wrong. Your karma is 2^32 + 47! That’s a whole separate bug, and a very wacky unexpected one too.
I’ve been upvoted at least once in the interim, so I suspect that it’s the same bug after all: my net negative post is contributing the 2^32, and my upvoted comments are contributing the 47. I have nothing like the programming skill needed to confirm this.
I’ve been thinking about Talisman’s post further, and I think my education is to blame. It’s been so heavy on persuasive writing and rhetoric that I’ve gotten into the habit of overstating my own confidence and hiding the chain of reason justifying my opinions, as a writing style rather than a style of thought.
Whatever the case, this may be my last comment. With a karma score that high, I’m sure to transcend the cycle of reincarnation! Nirvana by divine software bug is unorthodox, but I’ll take what I can get.