I used to be baffled when I told someone that what they were saying was clearly false and they got all butt-hurt about it; in retrospect it’s obvious that I was saying they were idiots, no matter how nicely I said it. Now I’m wondering if that makes me the idiot.

But the fact that this post does not clear up the mystery of why I don’t think people who prefer lobster to veal are morons makes it utterly useless. It has been damned by a devastating counterexample and I shall force this post from my mind.

Image via WikipediaI used to frequent Robin Hanson’s blog Overcoming Bias. Then, I disengaged partly because I could not understand the practical import of his…

We’re still likely to see a bail-out in the near future. So here’s a question: If the bail-out happens, how…

From the multiverse perspective, the girl and the mother exist in many worlds – in some of which the couple have gone to the ice cream vendor, and others the hardware store.

That doesn’t help them in their discussion too much – and it doesn’t prove that one of them is right about their destination, and the other is biased.

Determinism doesn’t help predict the future much if you can’t find out what the initial state is. That is, of course, exactly the situation embedded observers face.

Check the definition of “fact” in the dictionary. Note the repeated use of the past tense.

In your example the girl is really trying to convince her mom of the fact “your overall utility function will be higher (when weighted by the square of the amplitude of decoherent futures) if you buy me icecream”, since that is the fact that will convince her mom to buy her icecream. Neither one may understand exactly what they’re arguing, but neither do most philosophers who appeal to occam’s razor.

It may be a hard question to give a confident answer to, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fact, and that doesn’t mean you sit there and drool instead of calculating your expected utility (with the information and processing power available) and making a choice.

On a more general note, many commenters seem to have a different working definition of “disagreement” than Robin. RH seems to define “disagreement” as “differing probability distributions”, while many commenters seem to define it as “differing probability distributions *with no weight to other guys credibility*”. If I’m arguing with someone, it means we started with different probability distributions. If midway through the argument someone stops us and asks for our current probability distributions, we very well may give identical distributions (if we know we’re both rational).

I still say “I still don’t see how your argument leads to X being true, but since you do I must update accordingly”. Robin would say we don’t disagree, but seemingly others would say we do (on the other definition). It’s possible to not disagree (RH), but still find it arguing to be productive.

If you say “I still don’t see how your argument leads to X beign true, and I’m unwilling to move my distribution to match your post argument distribution”, that necessarily means you think the other guy is less rational, because you are in a disagreement (RH).

The possibility of an infinite loop, catch-22, vicious cycle (it’s a cognitive hypersensitivity that Jesus himself couldn’t get me to correct) forces me to choose to judge rather than let it pass. I transfer the question of respect to whether I’ll press the issue. Infinite loops rob everybody of truth, justice, and other valuables. I think there’s a lack of attention to the chaotic dillema of feedback loops so I can’t ignore it. I just spend less time whining about it than I used to and more time preventing myself from falling into such loops. I choose to be judge or jury for my own reasons, but I refuse to be the executioner.