No, Annoyance is upset that you presented a logical fallacy as an argument, that no one including you seems to care, and that the statement of your error is somehow seen as being antithetical to Less Wrong’s purpose and mission.
There was a post (I’m having trouble finding) with many examples of how “fallacies” can be reasonable forms of argument. e.g. Argument from authority is fallacious, but for many questions, it would be irrational to weight a child’s opinion as heavily as an adult’s.
Could someone provide the link? Annoyance, perhaps you could respond to it, because you seem very quick to point out fallacies and many in the community think it is sometimes unhelpful.
There’s an argument from authority that’s a fallacy, and one that’s not.
Arguments of the form, “S is an authority on X and says p, so we have reason to think that p” can be valid (possibly missing some easy steps) but might be unsound.
Arguments of the form “S is an authority on X and says p, therefore p” are just plainly invalid.
with many examples of how “fallacies” can be reasonable forms of argument.
I strongly suspect ‘reasonable’ is being used in the most common, and most erroneous, sense—that of “not striking the speaker as being unusual or producing cognitive dissonance”.
Fallacies are, by their nature, invalid arguments. There are sometimes valid arguments related loosely to the content of certain fallacies, but they should be asserted rather than the invalid form.
many in the community think it is sometimes unhelpful.
(edit to alter content to what I now think is a better phrasing)
These individuals need to be publicly identified as irrationalists.
I think you’re missing my point—we should be in 1 of 2 situations:
the intended audience already knows there’s a logical fallacy, so your statement communicates nothing
the intended audience does not know there’s a logical fallacy, so they also didn’t identify what and where the logical fallacy is and you might as well be helpful and point it out.
thomblake’s first case refers to people actually noticing the instance of fallacy, not just being abstractly familiar with the kind. Are you twisting words on purpose, or are you actually failing to notice what was intended?
Annoyance was pointing out the third case, which I had suggested was unlikely—that one might not notice that the reasoning is fallacious, but can work it out once it’s brought to one’s attention. Presumably, such people are the intended audience of “Logical Fallacy!” and I could see how that might be helpful to them. I still think it would be much more helpful to point out the specific instance, with little more effort.
I do see your point. However, if people can’t work through a brief, simple written argument and analyze it for its logical content by themselves, they’re really not ready to contribute.
Passing over a fallacy without recognizing it is something that a reasonable person might do inadvertently, or even because they want to accept the argument and so will tend not to notice. But someone who is incapable of working through and finding the flaw?
It’s not as though I replied to a page-long comment “There’s a word misspelled”. There would be hundreds or thousands of words involved, and even a recognizable typo might take a long time to locate. A word that someone genuinely misspelled would probably prove evasive for a long time.
The logical content of such a comment would be much simpler—and few comments here are that complex.
The great majority of those who judge increases to intelligence to be worse than the status quo would also judge decreases to be worse than the status quo. But this puts them in the rather odd position of maintaining that the net value for society provided by our current level of intelligence is at a local optimum, with small changes in either direction producing something worse. We can then ask for an explanation of why this should be thought to be so. If no sufficient reason is provided, our suspicion that the original judgment was influenced by status quo bias is corroborated.
[. . .]
The rationale of the Reversal Test is simple: if a continuous parameter admits of a wide range of possible values, only a tiny subset of which can be local optima, then it is prima facie implausible that the actual value of that parameter should just happen to be at one of these rare local optima [. . .] the burden of proof shifts to those who maintain that some actual parameter is at such a local optimum: they need to provide some good reason for supposing that it is so.
Obviously, the Reversal Test does not show that preferring the status quo is always unjustified. In many cases, it is possible to meet the challenge posed by the Reversal Test [. . .] Let us examine some of the possible ways [. . .]
The potential harms and benefits of intelligence depend partly on the nature of the system they exist in. Shift a system away from equilibrium, and harm will tend to predominate in the consequences until the system adapts. Adaptation takes time, and sometimes a great deal of learning.
We don’t need to believe that we’re at some kind of ultimate optimum to doubt whether a sudden change would be beneficial… as the arguments you mention suggest.
If one variable changes, the adaptations to the old value will no have the old effect—and they’re far more likely to be harmful than beneficial.
Imagine that people became more truthful overnight. All of the societal factors that relied on people being deceptive will be thrown out of balance. Benefits predicated upon a certain level of deception will not longer occur, and rules designed to induce people to be truthful in certain situations (like court proceedings) may end up causing more harm than good.
Imagine if people actually took the oath “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” seriously all of a sudden. Chaos, paralysis, and malfunctioning would be the immediate effects.
On second thought, no, it’s not always true. Both the improvement after the equilibrium is reached again, and change involving the confusion just after the change, are dependent on the extent of the change (and there need not be a sudden change, the whole process can be performed by shifting the state of adaptation). While state after-change is worse than state after-calming-down, both can be better than the initial state, or both worse than initial state, as well as on the different sides of the initial state.
Well, that’s not really an argument—it’s more of a conditional statement.
But if you were to take it as an argument, then it’s clearly skipping a step, but not a nonobvious one. It seems like you’d make more headway arguing that the argument (with implicit premise included) is unsound.
Clearly it’s at least logically possible that an INT of 15 is good, while 14 or 16 are bad.
I like the D&D reference, but for all practical purposes therein, 14 and 15 are just alike, except with regards to how far an increase or decrease of a given size will get you. So while 15 could be good while 16 is bad, 14 could not be bad while 15 is good (unless 16 was also good, and 15 was better than 14 by virtue of it being easy to get from 15 to 16).
I was just taking the numbers to be arbitrary, and didn’t notice that I was making a D&D reference. ha.
And as long as we’re talking D&D 3x, there’s some virtue in odd-numbered stats. If someone hits you for 1 point of ability damage, you don’t need to recalculate anything.
Get back? No one has yet demonstrated that you were making any progress towards preventing the end of the world. Or even attempting to make progress on that.
Well I think I have much to learn in terms of ad hominem, pointless but in-my-little-world-funny abuse. I’m never going to catch up with Cannibal’s −30…
Fallacious argument.
So:
AngryParsley is upset that I don’t think that if more intelligence is bad, then less intelligence is good
Annoyance is upset that I do think that if more intelligence is bad, then less intelligence is good
Could you please just get upset at each other?
No, Annoyance is upset that you presented a logical fallacy as an argument, that no one including you seems to care, and that the statement of your error is somehow seen as being antithetical to Less Wrong’s purpose and mission.
There was a post (I’m having trouble finding) with many examples of how “fallacies” can be reasonable forms of argument. e.g. Argument from authority is fallacious, but for many questions, it would be irrational to weight a child’s opinion as heavily as an adult’s.
Could someone provide the link? Annoyance, perhaps you could respond to it, because you seem very quick to point out fallacies and many in the community think it is sometimes unhelpful.
maybe that’s why he’s called Annoyance?!
There’s an argument from authority that’s a fallacy, and one that’s not.
Arguments of the form, “S is an authority on X and says p, so we have reason to think that p” can be valid (possibly missing some easy steps) but might be unsound.
Arguments of the form “S is an authority on X and says p, therefore p” are just plainly invalid.
There is no contradiction here.
agreed, still looking for the link.
I strongly suspect ‘reasonable’ is being used in the most common, and most erroneous, sense—that of “not striking the speaker as being unusual or producing cognitive dissonance”.
Fallacies are, by their nature, invalid arguments. There are sometimes valid arguments related loosely to the content of certain fallacies, but they should be asserted rather than the invalid form.
(edit to alter content to what I now think is a better phrasing)
These individuals need to be publicly identified as irrationalists.
Hey, I publicly identify myself as an irrationalist, and I have no problem calling a spade a spade.
That said, folks could easily think “Logical fallacy!” is about as helpful as “That comment had 25 characters!”
If you think people won’t notice that there’s a fallacy, then you should also think that they won’t know what it is, and kindly point it out.
how are you defining irrationalist? we are all, of course, imperfect rationalists.
I’ll have to write a blog post about that. For now, suffice it to say that I use it analogously to how a Nietzschean might use “amoralist”.
Amoral is to moral/immoral as arational is to rational/irrational?
That would be a much better distinction, wouldn’t it?
Well, maybe—but then what are they doing here?
I think you’re missing my point—we should be in 1 of 2 situations:
the intended audience already knows there’s a logical fallacy, so your statement communicates nothing
the intended audience does not know there’s a logical fallacy, so they also didn’t identify what and where the logical fallacy is and you might as well be helpful and point it out.
Even people who know what the fallacy is won’t necessarily notice it.
And people who didn’t recognize the fallacy can still use logic to determine what it is—or rather, they should be able to.
thomblake’s first case refers to people actually noticing the instance of fallacy, not just being abstractly familiar with the kind. Are you twisting words on purpose, or are you actually failing to notice what was intended?
Annoyance was pointing out the third case, which I had suggested was unlikely—that one might not notice that the reasoning is fallacious, but can work it out once it’s brought to one’s attention. Presumably, such people are the intended audience of “Logical Fallacy!” and I could see how that might be helpful to them. I still think it would be much more helpful to point out the specific instance, with little more effort.
I do see your point. However, if people can’t work through a brief, simple written argument and analyze it for its logical content by themselves, they’re really not ready to contribute.
Passing over a fallacy without recognizing it is something that a reasonable person might do inadvertently, or even because they want to accept the argument and so will tend not to notice. But someone who is incapable of working through and finding the flaw?
It’s not as though I replied to a page-long comment “There’s a word misspelled”. There would be hundreds or thousands of words involved, and even a recognizable typo might take a long time to locate. A word that someone genuinely misspelled would probably prove evasive for a long time.
The logical content of such a comment would be much simpler—and few comments here are that complex.
“This comment consists of 120 characters” is unhelpful even if nobody bothered to count and the given number is correct.
Truth that doesn’t pay its rent is poison.
Related: The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Biases in Applied Ethics, by Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord.
The potential harms and benefits of intelligence depend partly on the nature of the system they exist in. Shift a system away from equilibrium, and harm will tend to predominate in the consequences until the system adapts. Adaptation takes time, and sometimes a great deal of learning.
We don’t need to believe that we’re at some kind of ultimate optimum to doubt whether a sudden change would be beneficial… as the arguments you mention suggest.
In what you describe, the fact that the system is adapted in the current context is the reason the current context is a local optimum.
Yes, that’s always true.
If one variable changes, the adaptations to the old value will no have the old effect—and they’re far more likely to be harmful than beneficial.
Imagine that people became more truthful overnight. All of the societal factors that relied on people being deceptive will be thrown out of balance. Benefits predicated upon a certain level of deception will not longer occur, and rules designed to induce people to be truthful in certain situations (like court proceedings) may end up causing more harm than good.
Imagine if people actually took the oath “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” seriously all of a sudden. Chaos, paralysis, and malfunctioning would be the immediate effects.
On second thought, no, it’s not always true. Both the improvement after the equilibrium is reached again, and change involving the confusion just after the change, are dependent on the extent of the change (and there need not be a sudden change, the whole process can be performed by shifting the state of adaptation). While state after-change is worse than state after-calming-down, both can be better than the initial state, or both worse than initial state, as well as on the different sides of the initial state.
It’s highly unlikely that a shift away from equilibrium will be directly beneficial—but you’re right, it is possible.
I retract my earlier statement and qualify it.
Thanks, I created an article on the wiki, citing the paper and using your quote:
Reversal test.
Well, that’s not really an argument—it’s more of a conditional statement.
But if you were to take it as an argument, then it’s clearly skipping a step, but not a nonobvious one. It seems like you’d make more headway arguing that the argument (with implicit premise included) is unsound.
Clearly it’s at least logically possible that an INT of 15 is good, while 14 or 16 are bad.
I like the D&D reference, but for all practical purposes therein, 14 and 15 are just alike, except with regards to how far an increase or decrease of a given size will get you. So while 15 could be good while 16 is bad, 14 could not be bad while 15 is good (unless 16 was also good, and 15 was better than 14 by virtue of it being easy to get from 15 to 16).
Regarding D&D, what Annoyance said.
I was just taking the numbers to be arbitrary, and didn’t notice that I was making a D&D reference. ha.
And as long as we’re talking D&D 3x, there’s some virtue in odd-numbered stats. If someone hits you for 1 point of ability damage, you don’t need to recalculate anything.
The pearls of less wrong wisdom astound me! When we’ve finished playing D&D, can we get back to preventing the end of the world, kids?
Get back? No one has yet demonstrated that you were making any progress towards preventing the end of the world. Or even attempting to make progress on that.
I think that this comment is in the running for most downvoted on LW!
No, not even close. To be in the running you’d need to be at <-30 or −40.
who the hell got downvoted to −40?!
Well, this self-sacrifice is currently at −30.
Well I think I have much to learn in terms of ad hominem, pointless but in-my-little-world-funny abuse. I’m never going to catch up with Cannibal’s −30…
Depends on edition.
It’s impossible for this correction to be relevant.